Weizmann Institute Amazes World Again

[Eric Cordian]

You know, when I saw the headline for this story, the words "Weizmann
Institute" immediately leaped into my head.

It's just that certain something about Weizmann Institute press releases
that reminds me of University of Utah press conferences back in the days
of Cold Fusion.

In any case, the folks at the Weizmann Institute are now claiming to have
developed the "trillion would fit in a test tube" DNA computer.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/011121/107/199x5.html

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LONDON (Reuters) - Following Mother Nature's lead, Israeli scientists have
built a DNA computer so tiny that a trillion of them could fit in a test
tube and perform a billion operations per second with 99.8 percent
accuracy.
   
Instead of using figures and formulas to solve a problem, the microscopic
computer's input, output and software are made up of DNA molecules --
which store and process encoded information in living organisms.
   
Scientists see such DNA computers as future competitors to for their more
conventional cousins because miniaturisation is reaching its limits and
DNA has the potential to be much faster than conventional computers.
   
"We have built a nanoscale computer made of biomolecules that is so small
you cannot run them one at a time. When a trillion computers run together
they are capable of performing a billion operations," Professor Ehud
Shapiro of the Weizmann Institute in Israel told Reuters on Wednesday.
   
It is the first programmable autonomous computing machine in which the
input, output, software and hardware are all made of biomolecules.
   
Although too simple to have any immediate applications it could form the
basis of a DNA computer in the future that could potentially operate
within human cells and act as a monitoring device to detect potentially
disease-causing changes and synthesise drugs to fix them.
   
The model could also form the basis of computers that could be used to
screen DNA libraries in parallel without sequencing each molecule, which
could speed up the acquisition of knowledge about DNA.

...

-- 
Eric Michael Cordian 0+
O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division
"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"