Computer Scientists Create Reprogrammable Molecular Computing System

Date posted
Funding Agency
(Funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration)

Computer scientists at Caltech have designed DNA molecules that can carry out reprogrammable computations, for the first time creating so-called algorithmic self-assembly, in which the same "hardware" can be configured to run different "software." The system is analogous to a computer, but instead of using transistors and diodes, it uses molecules to represent a six-bit binary number as input, during computation, and as output.