DNA computing, also known as molecular computing, is a new
approach to massively parallel computation based on groundbreaking
work by Adleman . In November of 1994, Dr. Leonard Adleman wrote
the first paper on DNA computing. In this paper, he found a way to
solve the "Hamiltonian path problem," which involves finding all
the possible paths between a certain number of vertices. It is also
known as the "traveling salesman problem." This name comes from
viewing each vertex as a city, with the problem to find all
possible routes for a salesman passing through each of these cities
. Computers today all use binary codes - 1's and 0's or on's and
off's. These codes are the basis for all possible calculations a
computer is able to perform. Because the DNA molecule is also a
code, Adleman saw the possibility of employing DNA as a molecular
computer. However, rather than relying in the position of
electronic switches in a microchip, Adleman relied on the much
faster reactions of DNA nucleotides binding with their complements,
a brute force method that would indeed work A DNA computer is a
collection of DNA strands that have been specially selected to aid
in the search of solutions for some problems. DNA computing results
in parallelism, which means that when enough DNA information is
given, huge problems can be solved by invoking a parallel
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