A BIOLOGICAL MOLECULE BASED COMPUTING METHOD BASED ON A BLOCKING PRINCIPLE

摘要

A computational method that makes use of DNA molecules is disclosed. Themethod can be summarized as follows. First, a set of DNA moleculesrepresenting (by their sequences) all possible assignments to all variables ofa given computational problem is generated (this is the so-calledcombinatorial library of the problem). Second, all the DNA moleculesrepresenting assignments which do not correspond to solutions of the problemare inactivated (blocked) for reproduction or detection. Finally, one has tocheck only whether any active (non-blocked) molecules remain: a solution ofthe problem exists if and only if any such molecules remain. In principle thisallows to solve computationally difficult problems. We illustrate our methodby outlining a solution for the famous satisfiability problem using both apolymerase chain reaction (PCR) method and a fluorescent quenching assay.