DNA Computers

[fungus_mungus]

Have you guys ever heard of computers that use DNA to do processing? I'm talking about live DNA! Scientist have already created logic gates! Read this! (http://computer.howstuffworks.com/dna-computer.htm)

[baboons_in_the_night]

DNA Computing.

That was fascinating reading.

The technology is in its infancy and may well remain there.
I say this because the use of biologic material depends on how stable these molecules are. The formation of stable logic gates presumes faithful reproducibility of the three dimensional structure of the various DNA nucleotides.These are very labile and exquisitely sensitive to temperature,pH and other variables. I feel any variations or inability of these molecules to reproduce consistently identical primary,secondary,tertiary folding topology may greatly diminish their use as logic gates. You may have varying inputs that you think are similar but in actuality may differ slightly or greatly because of rapid bio-degradability and other unpredictable bio-variables. While I appreciate initial studies have been promising these difficulties I have mentioned have to be carefully and precisely overcome before nano-biologic computing really kicks off.

IMHO.

[baboons_in_the_night]

Someone raises the topic of DNA computing and when a response is posted he falls silent. What the heck?

OK,so who knows what about quantum computing?

[jagan]

As i have read that

A future technology for designing computers based on quantum mechanics, the science of atomic structure and function. It uses the "qubit," or quantum bit, which can hold an infinite number of values. In 1999, the feasibility of such a computer was demonstrated by a collaboration of scientists at MIT, the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University, which used a technique similar to MRI scans in hospitals. The computation that was accomplished was an ingenious search algorithm devised by Lov K. Grover of Bell Laboratories.

The concept is that the atoms can be made to perform higher level gating functions rather than just be used to store 0s and 1s. It is believed that such a device can handle multiple operations simultaneously and can factor large numbers 10,000 times faster than today's computers. In late 2001, researchers at IBM computed the factors of the number 15 using quantum techniques. Although there are gigantic hurdles to overcome, scientists believe this will be feasible some time in the future.

If quantum computing were to come about, the world of cryptography would undergo a dramatic change. In a short amount of time, such a device could be used to find the secret keys to all encryption algorithms.

[baboons_in_the_night]

The theoretical basis of quantum computing rests on two hypotheses in quantum mechanics:
1) superposition of fundamental particles,and
2)entanglement properties of particles.

As far as I am aware neither of these properties have yet been confirmed experimentally.

[Yudhister]

well baboons... I dont have much knowledge about quantum computing. Can u tell me more about this?