In Silico DNA computing

Abstract

DNA computing, one of the constituents of nature-inspired computing has two forms, namely, in vitro DNA computing and in silico DNA computing. In vitro DNA computing is the most popular one, where the authors deal with the topology of a dynamic structure consists of macromolecules (e.g., DNA) to solve computational problems. It started with the work of Adleman where in vitro DNA strands were synthesized to solve the travelling salesman problem [5]. Ullah et al. [4] have given an account of the usages of in vitro DNA computing. On the other hand, in silico DNA computing, the other form of DNA computing takes inspirations from the central dogma of molecular biology [6] and performs computation in silicon-based computing machines (i.e., in ordinary computers) to solve computational problems. The central dogma of molecular biology means “once (sequential) information has passed into protein it cannot get out again” [6]. In other words, mappings of DNA/RNA to DNA/RNA/protein are possible but not protein to DNA/RNA/protein [3,4].