Largest biochemical circuit built out of small synthetic DNA molecules
Thursday, June 2, 2011 - 13:30
in Physics & Chemistry
In many ways, life is like a computer. An organism's genome is the software that tells the cellular and molecular machinerythe hardwarewhat to do. But instead of electronic circuitry, life relies on biochemical circuitrycomplex networks of reactions and pathways that enable organisms to function. Now, researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have built the most complex biochemical circuit ever created from scratch, made with DNA-based devices in a test tube that are analogous to the electronic transistors on a computer chip.