DNA Computing
The computing power of today is based on increasingly tiny bits of Silicon which conducts electricity, transistors. What happens when we can’t make them any smaller? And then, can’t increase the CPU’s speed? Here we will dive into how DNA computing works, why is it on the mind of researchers, and why Microsoft and IBM are investing large sums of cash in making the technology a reality!
It’s no surprise that the amount of data we are producing in the world is exploding. Where do we store it though? How do we process it? Quantum Computing is one way, but there are many problems to solve with quantum. For one, quantum computing requires an extremely cold operating-environment, so cold that atoms are at an almost complete stop, below 1 k which is -272 degrees Celsius. This requires an immense amount of energy and space-age tech to make it happen. Transistors in computers are passing electrical signals. A lot of signals. The transistors in the latest CPU are getting incredibly tiny, just a few nanometers. If the transistors get any smaller than they are currently, the electrical current flowing through the transistor easily leaks out into other components nearby or deforms the transistors due to heat which leads to messy currents which don’t calculate anything. Innovation in computing could come to a halt. What we need is another way to keep improving the performance of computing. One very promising approach is to use the bio-compatible computing device, Deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA. No, it’s not about finding fossilized mosquitoes in pieces of amber. DNA computing uses DNA, biochemistry, and molecular biology hardware. We all own a DNA computing device. In DNA, genetic coding is represented by four different molecules called A, T, C, and G These four bits when chained together can hold an incredible amount of data. After all the human genome is encoded in something that can be packed into a single nucleus of a cell.
DNA Computing isn’t a new concept as such. In 1964, Russian physicist Mikhail Samoilovich Neiman,” expressed original ideas and principal considerations of radical miniaturization on elements for recording, storing, and retrieving of digital information to the molecular-atomic level”
It wasn’t until the 1990s that actual work started with storing data on strands of DNA. When Leonard Adelman presented the prototype of a DNA computer it was called the TT-100 and was a test tube. Now, what does a DNA computer look like? The actual computing takes place when DNA is mixed and matched in a test tube. Will you need test tubes on your laptop then? We will get to this shortly.
DNA cloud
The data we produce every second of every hour of every day has to go somewhere, Currently, a lot of it ends up in the cloud. Cloud-hosted storage is pretty cheap and it is estimated by 2025 that half of the zettabytes of data produced will be stored in the cloud.
Microsoft is also concerned about having to store all of these cat gifs and meme generators. So they’re investing in DNA computing technology. In 2019 researchers from Microsoft and the University of Washington demonstrated the first fully automated system to store and retrieve data.
They wrote, “hello”. Not as impressive as the literary works of Shakespeare, but it was done with snippets of fabricated DNA. The end goal is to reduce the warehouse-size data centers into something much smaller. Now, the cool thing is that the end consumer will never know, storage will just continue to be the storage. The researchers at Washington University have so far managed to store one gigabyte in DNA, and yes, they did store funny cat photos.
Where can I buy one?
So when can you buy your DNA computer and fill it with all of the internet? Probably not anytime soon, if ever. The future of computing is not about the extremely powerful devices in your pocket but the rather super-fast connection to the cloud and other services. DNA computers will be doing huge calculations and store enormous amounts of data but in a fixed location. The current cost of storing and encoding one megabyte of data is one million dollars.
The one area that will benefit hugely is data security. DNA-based security sounds like a terrible plot in a cheap sci-fi movie but it is real. It will be in DNA cryptography which works largely like classical geography with their private and public key, but it is incredibly fast and the keys can be massive.
DNA computing has the promise of cheap huge accessible data storage and an exponential increase in computing power and speed. There are huge challenges though not least the cost of creating the DNA, but we are past the proof of concept phase and real money is being spent to create real commercial solutions.
