Molecular
computing is an emerging field to which chemistry, biophysics, molecular biology,
electronic engineering, solid state physics and computer science contribute to
a large extent. It involves the encoding, manipulation and retrieval of information
at a macromolecular level in contrast to the current techniques, which accomplish
the above functions via IC miniaturization of bulk devices. The biological systems
have unique abilities such as pattern recognition, learning, self-assembly and
self-reproduction as well as high speed and parallel information processing. The
aim of this article is to exploit these characteristics to build computing systems,
which have many advantages over their inorganic (Si,Ge) counterparts.DNA
computing began in 1994 when Leonard Adleman proved thatDNA computing was possible
by finding a solution to a real- problem, a Hamiltonian Path Problem, known to
us as the Traveling Salesman Problem,with a molecular computer. In theoretical
terms, some scientists say the actual beginnings of DNA computation should be
attributed to Charles Bennett's work.
Adleman, now considered the father of DNA
computing, is a professor at the University of Southern California and spawned
the field with his paper, "Molecular Computation of Solutions of Combinatorial
Problems." Since then, Adleman has demonstrated how the massive parallelism
of a trillion DNA strands can simultaneously attack different aspects of a computation
to crack even the toughest combinatorial problems.
