Researchers from the University of Manchester under the supervision of Professor Ross king, designed a computing device on the basis of deoxyribonucleic acid. If you think of DNA as the programming language of life, why not create on its basis a computer that can perform calculations? If DNA is able to give orders to the white blood cells to attack the infection, or cause hair to grow, it is theoretically possible to adapt it to process huge amounts of data. That was proved by British scientists.
The current generation of computers uses a number of processors and their cores to perform certain operations. Device on the basis of DNA molecules able to replicate itself to grow in order to simultaneously perform more and more calculations. Quantum computers, currently at a very early stage of development, is also capable of incredibly fast parallel calculations, but their work is connected with great technical difficulties, but DNA computers such limitations have been identified.
Professor Ross king for the first time in history demonstrated the non-deterministic universal Turing machine. Theoretically, such a device is able to increase its productivity exponentially, leaving far behind the traditional electronic and even quantum computers. Scientists around the world tried to prove the possibility of creating such a computer for decades. But the British scientist was the first to implement such a mechanism based on DNA molecules. The results of their work, the researchers plan to publish in the prestigious journal of the Royal Society Interface in the near future.
“Imagine a computer that is trying to get out of the maze and finds himself at a crossroads. E-the computer will select either the left way or right. And our computing device does not have anything to choose, it can split and go at the same time on both roads, thus speeding up the process of finding the right solution. This “magical” ability is possible due to the fact that a computer made of DNA, not silicon chips,” explains Professor king.
Quantum computers are also able to “go in two directions at the fork”, if to Express in the words of Professor, but this is only possible provided that the labyrinth has a certain symmetry, and this, in turn, greatly limits the ability of such computers. Due to the fact that DNA molecules are very small desktop computers on the basis of this technology is able to accommodate much more components than a traditional PC. The consumption of energy, DNA computers will also seek to minimize. Of course, consumer solutions based on this discovery will appear only after dozens of years, but we just witnessed a very important scientific discovery.
