Dna Computing, The Future Or The End Essays - Molecular Biology

Dna Computing, The Future Or The End? DNA Computing, The Future or the End? The future of computers is in the hands of the next century. The evolution of the Computer Age has become a part of everyday life, and as time proceeds, people are depending more and more on computer technology. From controlling a small wrist watch to the largest super-computers that can calculated the center of the universe, computers are essential for everyone in modern societies. Even most societies outside of the civilized world are not immune to computer technology because they do not have to own a computer to be effected by one. Many cultures, and their futures are subjects to the computer age without even being aware of it. Most anything that has been produced, one way or another, is controlled, scanned, processed, or moved around by some type of computer to manufacture that product for availability in the market. When a consumer goes to purchase these products, their currency will be stored in a cash register that will most likely be a type of computer. The availability of computers has changed, and is changing everything we once knew. There are faster ways of being discovered to manufacture goods or control traffic of those goods everyday. A quicker and better equipped computer would complete a task in minutes when in the past the simple task-procedure may have taken weeks, months, or even years to accomplish manually. One of the most recent and fascinating discoveries was a ?DNA? based computer. Just as we create mathematical computers, computers affect our biological lives. The connection of the two may have finally been conceived. ?Despite their respective complexities, biological and mathematical operations have some similarities: The very complex structure of a living being is the result of applying simple operations to initial information encoded in a DNA sequence; All complex math problems can be reduced to simple addition and subtraction(Friedman).? Incredibly, information is stored in actual strands of DNA. This discovery will revolutionize the future of computers. With the rate of technology the human race has acquired in this century, this new type of DNA technology could make computers of many types smaller than most people could imagine. A compact disk with the DNA encoding could have ten times the storing capabilities as a any CD produced in the world today. This new technology also uses nerve type impulses which greatly accelerate the speed of stored information to be utilized by the computer. It is possible, that every computer we come in contact with will be revolutionized by this newly found resource in technology and this could create unheard of amounts of information storage space on even a simple PC. This discovery could create more room to expand and introduce increased functions to satisfy customer needs to the fullest extent (Halper 122). The mere idea of DNA based computing became known about only a few years ago on November 11, 1994, when Leonard Adleman published an article of the subject in the acclaimed weekly journal, Science. The article described: ?Molecular Computation of Solutions of Combinatorial Problems,? was Adleman's documentation of the first successful though small-scale attempt at designing a DNA based computer. Some critics believe that this context would be a fluke and expected Adleman would fail. To their surprise, they later found a great possibility that this new technology could easily be reproduced. However it will be after the end of the twentieth century before the bulk of the possibilities can be learned about DNA computing. DNA computing is just over three years old, and for this reason, it is too early for either great optimism or great pessimism about the technology. Early computers such as ENIAC filled entire rooms, and had to be programmed by punch cards. Since that time, computers have since become much smaller and easier to use. DNA computers will become more common for solving very complex problems; Just as DNA cloning and sequencing were once manual tasks, DNA computers will now become automated. The first model, of small scale, could restore memory and calculate twice as fast as the worlds leading super-computer, for a very economical price. Thus creating endless possibilities of the use of DNA computing for big business, government and many other types of organizations (Baum 583). Once the bulk of its possibilities have been studied and learned the dawn of DNA based computers would cause the super-computers of tomorrow to be able to handle far more tasks and information than the computers of today. Computers today can only handle a few thousand tasks or operations at the same time, whereas DNA based computers will have the capabilities to perform billions of functions simultaneously. This new technology will have the impact on present day computers as