Programming Molecules To Let Chemicals Make Decisions

Nerval's Lobster writes "Computer scientists at Harvard University have come up with a way to convert algorithms that teach machines to learn into a form that would allow artificial intelligence to be programmed into complex chemical reactions. The ultimate result could be smart drugs programmed to react differently depending on which of several probable situations they might encounter – without the need to use nano-scale electronics to carry the instructions. 'This kind of chemical-based AI will be necessary for constructing therapies that sense and adapt to their environment,' according to Ryan P. Adams, assistant professor of computer science at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), who co-wrote the paper explaining the technique (PDF). 'The hope is to eventually have drugs that can specialize themselves to your personal chemistry and can diagnose or treat a range of pathologies.' The techniques are part of a larger effort to program the behavior of molecules in manufacturing, decision-making and diagnostics, using both nano-scale electronics and the still-relatively-new study of bionanotechnology."

Comments

First step

[Rick Zeman]

Sounds like the first step to creating Orson Scott Card's "descadola" virus. When reality imitates fiction....

Re:First step

[Rick Zeman]

Errr, "descolada." Think I was dyslexic a bit there....

Prior Art: Testosterone

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on. Men have been letting testosterone make decisions for them since the dawn of mankind.

aka..

[houbou]

a super-smart kryptonian white cell? :) lets' just make sure we stay under a yellow sun! :)

Intresting idea

[prefec2]

If I understand that correctly, it can work like a selection expression from XPath, aspect languages or graph search terms to match on the right "locations" in a lifeform body or any other complicated mixture, like soil.

Re: Intresting idea

[Electricity Likes Me]

That eas my take from the paper - although this still seems very theoretical. The DNA computation implementation example isn't very useful because DNA is too unstable and too involved with regular biology to be used like that.

The problem here is they're srill missing all the components to let you build something: you need a couple of molecules which can bind to useful cell receptors, change their state and unbind. Or you need a message carrier to bind to them and do the same. Then you need a whole family of drugs which can be selectively inhibited by your messengers.

And then all of this needs to possibly avoid localization effects - i.e. your messengers need to avoid being concentrated in the body such that they might activate a whole bunch of drugs one-way, which then get absorbed faster then messengers elsewhere can deactivate them due to a positivs signal in one location.

w00t!

[easyTree]

Awesome - I can't wait until the script kiddies get hold of this and use it hack people and create armies of zombies.

/me gets his shotgun and baseball bat and heads for the roof.

Re:This is the future folks

[mark-t]

Both are important... for different reasons. Concentrating on one to the exclusion of the other is what is bad.

Re:Bugs

[pepty]

Oddly enough the molecular programming part (polling the state of the cell, making a decision) will probably prove easier than the traditional part (crafting the drug that actually carries out the decision)

Logic gates vs. AI

[kruach aum]

Rather than talking about these molecules in terms of Artificial Intelligence I think it would be more accurate to say that the molecules instead have some very rudimentary if-then logic designed into them. At this stage it doesn't sound *that* much more advanced than a reagent that turns blue in substance A and green in substance B.

Scale issues

[thisisauniqueid]

Wait, use chemical reactions on the scale of femtometers to avoid using electronics on the scale of nanometers? Got it.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

(I'm being entirely 100% serious here, not derogatory in any way.) Could you please expand a little bit on that, for those of us that aren't in the field? This is one of the reasons I read Slashdot--to get the opinions of people way smarter than me.

We already have chemicals making decisions

[maxwell demon]

We already have chemicals making decisions. There are chemicals storing the program (DNA), chemicals reading the program (ribosomes), and chemicals executing the program (enzymes). The systems running on such molecular logic are usually called "organisms".

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:BS

[sjames]

Not the best example there. I *DO* hope you were going for funny.