As you have hopefully seen on the previous pages, DNA Computing can be used to solve problmes now, problems of a type that some supercomputers have difficulty with. While solving a traveling salesman problem for 5 like we did, or even 7, like Adleman did in his original experiment is no great feat, governmental funding and the research and development going on in this field may pay off, and create a whole new generation of computers that can solve hugely difficult problems almost instantaneoulsy. However, there are some problems that arise with DNA computing. Solving a problem, like the traveling salesman problem, for a large number of cities would increase the number of DNA strands needed exponentially. For 200 cities, you would need an amount of DNA that weighed as much as the planet, even though DNA is so small. Also, DNA is still not good at one-at-a-time tasks, and most of the things that are done on a modern day computer at home are one-at-a-time tasks, such as surfing the web, typing a document, or playing a game. Not many people care about whether a salesman can go from here to there if this and that have to happen. But still, DNA computing does have practical use elsewhere, mostly because of its size. And originally, one-at-a-time computers where just as hard to use as DNA computers, right?
The best possible hope for DNA computers at this time is in devices that operate on the nanoscale level, almost infinetismely smaller than computers of the day operate at. Most research in the field today works towards this goal, and the 9th International Meeting on DNA-Based Computers will mainly address this goal. Possible nanodevices that could employ DNA computing technolgoy are devices that can make repairs on the cellular level in a human body, something that current devices cannot do, and devices that act as biosensors in a human body to alert scientists or doctors when something goes wrong. DNA computing may also be used in place of silicon chips, resulting in much smaller computers. These nanoscale devices are now known as bimolecular machines, and optimists say that eventually, they will be able to operate with almost no human interaction, much like computers today. But this hasn't happened yet, and there is no guarantee that it ever will. But until we have a definite knowledge of whether we can or cannot do it, all we can do is sit, wait, and pour that government money into DNA computational research.
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