From: rhinoceros (rhinoceros@freemail.gr)
Date: Tue Aug 19 2003 - 18:38:34 MDT
First game-playing DNA computer revealed
New Scientist, 18 August 2003
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994063
The first game-playing DNA computer has been revealed - an enzyme-powered tic-tac-toe machine that cannot be beaten.
The human player makes his or her moves by dropping DNA into 3 by 3 square of wells that make up the board. The device then uses a
complex mixture of DNA enzymes to determine where it should place its nought or cross, and signals its move with a green glow.
The device, dubbed MAYA, was developed by Milan Stojanovic, at Columbia University in New York, and Darko Stefanovic, at the
University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Kobi Benenson, who works on other DNA approaches at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, says
the work demonstrates the most complex use of molecules as logic gates to date, and "represents a significant advance in DNA
computing."
More complex computational tasks than noughts and crosses could be tackled with different arrangements of the enzymes. But the pair
acknowledge that the approach will never rival silicon computers, because human action is needed to operate the gates in system and
it is not reusable.
"It's lovely work," says Peter Bentley, a computer scientist linked to University College London. But he notes that a system that
cannot be extended much further than playing tic-tac-toe "is merely a novelty". Stojanovic and Stefanovic are aware of this and are
now focusing on developing simple decision-making solutions that can operate in vivo. Molecules could, for example, assess faults in
a living cell and then either kill or repair it.
<snip>
---- This message was posted by rhinoceros to the Virus 2003 board on Church of Virus BBS. <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=54;action=display;threadid=29117> --- To unsubscribe from the Virus list go to <http://www.lucifer.com/cgi-bin/virus-l>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Aug 20 2003 - 06:20:38 MDT