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DNA computing

Molecules reach consensus

Nature Nanotechnology volume 8, pages 703–705 (2013)Cite this article

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DNA molecules can be programmed to execute any dynamic process of chemical kinetics and can implement an algorithm for achieving consensus between multiple agents.

The intersection of computer science and molecular biology is a fertile ground for new and exciting science. Two notable examples of this are molecular computing and molecular programming. Molecular computing is the use of molecules, and typically biological molecules, to create programmable autonomous computing devices1,2,3,4,5,6,7. Whereas molecular programming is the use of computer programming languages to describe, simulate, analyse and even engineer the behaviour of molecular systems, and typically systems made of biological molecules8,9,10,11,12. Writing in Nature Nanotechnology, Georg Seelig and colleagues13 at the University of Washington, Microsoft Research in Cambridge, the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, San Francisco have now shown that the fields of molecular computing and molecular programming can join forces to create programmable chemical controllers made of DNA, which can be programmed to reach consensus14.

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Figure 1: DNA strand displacement.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, and the Department of Biological Chemistry, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, 76100, Israel

    Ehud Shapiro & Tom Ran

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  1. Ehud Shapiro
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Correspondence to Ehud Shapiro.

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Shapiro, E., Ran, T. Molecules reach consensus. Nature Nanotech 8, 703–705 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2013.202

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