Enzymes and Nucleic Acids as Hardware for DNA Computing


Zhizhou Zhang1,3, Chunhai Fan2, Jun Hu1,2, and Lin He1,3

1Bio-X Life Science Research Center,
2Division of Nanobiology and Pharmacology, Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China 201800, and
3Shanghai Institute for Systems Biology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China 200030

e-mail: zhangzz@sjtu.edu.cn

URL: http://bdcc.kmip.net/htmls/dnacomputer/index.php

 

DNA computing provides a specific avenue for development of DNA-based technology. We are investigating DNA computing through the BIO-X DNA Computer Consortium, in which we focus on molecular biology manipulations of DNA molecules, primary DNA-computing unit characterization, DNA computing-chip development, and a series of related interdisciplinary studies. It is reasonalbe that DNA computing itself is much harder to achieve than its significant implications in functional genomics studies. In order to make enzyme-free DNA computing system, some enzymes are checked in details in the context of DNA computing efficiency. Ribozymes are tested as specific tools for DNA automaton. These studies help us to realize that DNA computing has great potential to “treat” huge amount of information hidden in the genome sequence.