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How to Compute with DNA

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1738))

Abstract

This paper addresses two main aspects of DNA computing research: DNA computing in vitro and in vivo. We first present a model of DNA computation developed in [5]: the circular insertion/deletion system. We review the result obtained in [5] stating that this system has the computational power of a Turing machine, and present the outcome of a molecular biologylab oratoryex periment from [5] that implements a small instance of such a system. This shows that rewriting systems of the circular insertion/deletion type are viable alternatives in DNA computation in vitro. In the second half of the paper we address DNA computing in vivo by presenting a model proposed in [17] and developed in [18] for the homologous recombinations that take place during gene rearrangement in ciliates. Such a model has universal computational power which indicates that, in principle, some unicellular organisms may have the capacity to perform any computation carried out by an electronic computer.

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© 1999 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Kari, L., Daley, M., Gloor, G., Siromoney, R., Landweber, L.F. (1999). How to Compute with DNA. In: Rangan, C.P., Raman, V., Ramanujam, R. (eds) Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science. FSTTCS 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1738. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-46691-6_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-46691-6_21

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-66836-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-46691-8

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