Two Molecular Information Processing Systems Based on Catalytic Nucleic Acids

Abstract

Mixtures of molecules are capable of powerful information processing [1]. This statement is in the following way self-evident: it is a hierarchically organized complex mixture of molecules that is formulating it to other similarly organized mixtures of molecules. By making such a statement I am not endorsing the extreme forms of reductionism; rather, I am making what I think is a small first step towards harnessing information processing prowess of molecules and, hopefully, overcoming some limitations of more traditional computing paradigms. There are different ideas on how to understand and use molecular information processing abilities and I will list some below. My list is far from inclusive, and delineations are far from clear-cut; whenever available, I will provide examples from our research efforts. I should stress, for a computer science audience that I am a chemist. Thus, my approach may have much different focus and mathematical rigor, then if it would be taken by a computer scientist.