Researchers from under the leadership of Professor Ross King developed a computing device based on deoxyribonucleic acid. If you take DNA as a programming language of life, then why not create a computer on its base capable of performing calculations? If DNA is able to give orders to white blood cells to attack an infection, or to make the hair grow, it is theoretically possible to adapt it to handle huge amounts of data. As the British scientists have proved.
The current generation of computers uses a certain number of processors and their cores to perform certain operations. The device on the basis of DNA molecules is able to copy itself, grow in order to simultaneously perform an increasing number of calculations. Quantum computers, which are currently at a very early stage of development, are also capable of incredibly fast parallel calculations, but their work is associated with enormous technical difficulties, but for DNA computers there are no such limitations.
For the first time in history, Professor Ross King demonstrated the work of a non-deterministic universal Turing machine. In theory, such a device can increase its performance exponentially, leaving traditional electronic and even quantum computers far behind. Scientists around the world have tried to prove the possibility of creating such a computer for decades. But the British scientist for the first time managed to implement a similar mechanism based on DNA molecules. The results of their work, scientists plan to publish in the prestigious journal Journal of the Royal Society Interface in the near future.
“Imagine a computer that is trying to get out of a maze and turns up at a fork in the road. The electronic computer will choose either the left road or the right one. But our computing device does not need to choose anything, it can be split in two and go simultaneously on both roads, thereby speeding up the process of finding the right solution. This “magical” ability becomes possible due to the fact that the computer is made from DNA, and not from silicon chips, ”explains Professor King.
Quantum computers are also capable of "going in two directions at once at the fork", if expressed in the words of the professor, but this is possible only if the labyrinth has a strictly defined symmetry, and this, in turn, severely limits the capabilities of such computers. Due to the fact that DNA molecules are very small, desktop computers based on this technology can accommodate a lot more components than traditional PCs. At the same time, the energy consumption of DNA computers will also tend to a minimum. Of course, consumer decisions based on this discovery will appear only decades later, but we have just witnessed a discovery that is very important for science.
The article is based on materials .
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