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CS 881a -- Topics in Computing and Biology: DNA Computing
From the Course Outline:
- Description
In 1994, Adleman astonished the scientific community when he solved an instance of the Directed Hamiltonian Path Problem in a test tube, just by handling DNA strands. Lipton followed by showing how to solve the Satisfiability Problem and other NP-complete problems by DNA computing.
Two fundamental questions, formulated by Adleman and Lipton, were left open:
- Can every algorithm/program be simulated by a DNA Algorithm?
- Is it possible, to design programmable DNA computers, i.e. `test tube computers' able to run arbitrarily given programs?
In this course we investigate the above problems by studying several computational models for DNA computing. More precisely, we explore ways of encoding information in DNA sequences, molecular procedures used for computation, classes of problems that can be solved by DNA computing, and the feasibility and advantages of a DNA computer.
The construction of a DNA computer would revolutionize the way we think about computing. In the particular case solved by Adleman, the estimated speed exceeded that of current supercomputers by more than a thousandfold, the energy efficency was 10**10 times greater, and storing infomration in DNA molecules was 10**12 times more economic.
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- Topics
- Introduction to DNA computing
- Encoding information in DNA
- Bio-operations
- DNA models of computation
- DNA algorithms
- Error rates in DNA computing
I have a list of resources I think are useful for students in the course.
This document is copyright by its author, J. Blustein.