COLLEGE OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATICS

Department: - Information system

Seminar title: DNA computing

Group member name ID number

1. Abush Kassa…………………………………………..082/10
2. Wube feleke …………………........................................156/10
3. Zerihun Urael…………………………………………….160/10

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Outlines
 Introduction
 History of DNA computing;
 Applications of DNA computing
 Limitations of DNA computing

Introduction
 DNA computing is an emerging branch of computing which uses DNA, biochemistry,
and molecular biology hardware, instead of the traditional electronic computing.
Research and development in this area concerns theory, experiments, and applications
of DNA computing
 DNA computing, the performing of computations using biological molecules, rather than
traditional silicon chips.
 DNA computing is a branch of bio molecular computing concerned with the use of DNA
as a carrier of information to make arithmetic and logic operations.
 DNA computing is an area of natural computing based on the idea that molecular biology
processes can be used to perform arithmetic and logic operations on information encoded
as DNA strands.

History of DNA computing;

DNA computing was first described in 1994 by computer scientist Leonard Adleman of
the University of Southern California. After reading up on the structure of DNA, he use
DNA to an infamous mathematical and computer science problem known as the directed
Hamilton Path problem, commonly called the “traveling salesman” problem (though the
Hamilton Path problem is slightly different version of the traveling salesaman problem,
for our purposes they are essentially interchangeable).
In early 1994, Adleman put his theory of DNA computing to test on a problem called the
traveling salesman problem
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 A Hamiltonian path or traceable path is a path that visits each vertex of the
graph exactly once
Figure 1

From: Solving a Hamiltonian Path Problem with a bacterial computer

A directed graph containing a unique Hamiltonian path. The seven

nodes are connected with fourteen directed edges. The Hamiltonian Path
Problem is to start at node 1, end at node 5, and visit each node exactly once while
following the available edges. Adleman programmed a DNA computer to find the
unique Hamiltonian path in this graph (1→4→7→2→3→6→5).

DNA computing is an area of natural computing based on the idea that molecular biology
processes can be used to perform arithmetic and logic operations on information encoded as
DNA strands. The first part of this review outlines basic molecular biology notions necessary for
understanding DNA computing, recounts the first experimental demonstration of DNA
computing (Adleman’s 7-vertex Hamiltonian Path Problem).

Applications of DNA computing

 Cryptography/cracking message
 DNA chips

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 Genetic programming

 Pharmaceutical applications

Limitations of DNA
computing

 DNA computing involves relatively large amount of errors.

 Requires human assistance.
 Time consuming laboratory procedure.

 No universal methods of data representation.

Conclusion
The paradigm of DNA computing has lead to a very important theoretical research.
However DNA computers won’t flourish soon in our daily environment due to the
technologic issues.
Adleman renouncement toward electronic computing.