Biomolecular Computers

wanderingstar writes "The BBC has an article about a prototype of little Turing machines that live in your body and heal you. It's being presented at conference going on at MIT right now about "DNA Based Computers". There was also a presentation yesterday about embedding information into DNA. " Mmm...nano-bio-tech.. All of hemos' favorite things.

Comments

I'm not too sure what to make of this...

[Millennium]

In theory, this is a Good Thing. After all, little robots healing any damage that befalls me? Great!

However, consider the other uses of these things. First, as a weapon. And you know that's what the military will use them for first. What better weapon is there, after all? Dump a few billion in the water supply and kill off everyone, then have the nanites "dissolve" the bodies so that there's no mess.

Then take that further and you have an instrument of controlling people. Sure, you're not literally dictating their throughts, but if a person has them in there it wouldn't take much to have the nanites go berserk and destroy everything.

Take this further still and you have the ultimate instrument of torture. Kill a person as slowly and painfully as you like, or simply heal them of any damage you do then do it again and again and again.

I wish these things would be used as this doctor would like to see them used. But it won't happen.

Sub-cellular repair

[Anne Observer]

Got it covered. That's what I trained my midichlorians to do.

Biocomputers and nanites

[sig]

I was at this consortum. They had some tasty ice cream.

I think its a shame that the bio-computer people aren't talking to the nanite people as much as they should. It seems like the downward scaling problems of nanotechnology and the upward complexity problems of bio-computing could be solved if they got together and developed some sort of hybrid technology which used the strenghts of both.

cya

nothing new

[cweber]

This is nothing new really. It is exactly what our immune system is doing already, and very well at that. The immune system even continues to function when being hammered with myriads of problems all at the same time or when receiving a strong do not act signal. And the immune system is just a part of the continuous growth and turnover in our bodies which is usually referred to as life.

Without the continous healing, rebuilding and growth occurring in our bodies, you and I would cease to exist within days, if not quicker.

Our bodies are not static. They are the product of continuous buildup and removal of molecules, precisely orchestrated in space and time and self-organizing. As such, we resemble much more the seemingly static patterns seen in flowing water than a machine that is first built and then used. See nonlinear thermodynamics and chaos theory.

I just wonder if purposely built 'machines/computers' to 'enhance' these functions will really do so, or rather get in the way.

CUAUUGU = Leu Leu Nada

[Xofer D]

From what I read here, the big difference between the functionality of Dr. Shapiro's device and that of ribosomes (rRNA), mRNA and tRNA is that Dr. Shapiro's machine could be made to construct strands of nucleic acids (read: more mRNA) while the RNA's can only build protein chains. I think this is a pretty big difference, because the machine's output can also be its input (which you really really don't want in cells). The upshot is that it won't be healing you any time soon - it deals in nucleic acids, not proteins, and it's too small to have little robotic arms or something to sew things up. :)

I have to do some more reading of the paper yet but what will really be interesting is how he proposes to keep the thing operating reliably - even DNA transcription (an incredibly fast and reliable process, IMHO) is prone to the occasional mutation (read/write error). DNA deals with this using redundancy and graceful failure (eg: the last GU in the subject mRNA string doesn't do anything at all instead of coding a second head).

I'm not sure how useful this device will be in doing any real computing - it will take some more work to develop algorithms for what looks like a fundamentally wacky programming paradigm (Have you booted your Turing machine lately? Now, do it with chemicals!) and plus there is no mention of the speed of this device. Who knows, it could be prohibitively slow. What looks nifty is the implications in data storage; in the paper, Dr. Shapiro writes, "The trace polymer created during the computation represents past state changes and head movements, as well as the symbols that were "erased" from the tape during each transition, and as such has several important advantages. First, the trace polymer renders the computer reversible." He goes on to describe how this could also make data storage inherently more efficient. So, rather than looking at cures for cancer I think we should look at very small and very auditable data storages.

Don't take my word for it. Go /. the horse's mouth! Buried in Dr. Shapiro's web site at the Weizmann institute is some Supporting material for the lecture including the paper itself (RTF).

Owie

[Skyshadow]

Given the picture, I don't see a major market for these things.
I mean, having something make repairs is cool, but imagine
having something the size of a breadbox swimming around in ya...

[IMPORTANT: This is humor. I was not born in West Virgina.]

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Thats great and all, but does it run Linux?

[Xanthien]

:P, Why would you even WANT it to run linux?

But seriously, this technology would be amazing. These little bots could kill matasticizing cancer cells, fight the aids virus, cure the common cold :), they could also fix failing organs, help your poor ol liver out a little bit, and clean that nasty cholesterol out of your blood system.

Thats nice and all, but don't forget the reverse side of the story, they could be used for lots of nasty things, Conspiracy theorists would have a fieldday going over the possiblities. Don't forget the perfect weapon/torture device. Want some info? Dump the bots in someone's body and have them stimulate pain but keep the body in perfect condition for a week or two. Want to do some ethnic cleansing? Find the genes that code meletonin levels or dominent feature among the ethnic race you don't want, fuel the choppers, spray a little metalic rain on a populace, have the bots go through the skin, scan the dna, and if the person isn't on your ok list, instant/not so instant death.

Also, would you want a government agency the runs sigint operations having access to the bots that you get injected with at birth? Sure the bots might clean drug out of your system, but if you an uptight stuffshirt in a high place, why not just code them to kill anyone with enough of an illegal substance in there body? Pepsi could put it in their drink and have little bots that would detect Coke and alter people's tastebuds to make it taste like shit.

Hope we as a people are ready for these little bots :P