The Change Mariner

DNA Computer Detects, Treats Disease in Test Tube

Yahoo! News:

Scientists have come a step closer to creating a minuscule DNA computer that may one day be able to spot diseases like cancer from inside the body and release a drug to treat it.

Professor Ehud Shapiro and researchers at Israel's Weizmann Institute constructed the world's smallest biomolecular computer a few years ago.

Now they have programmed it to analyze biological information to detect and treat prostate cancer and a form of lung cancer in laboratory experiments.

"We've taken our earlier molecular computer and augmented it with an input and output module. Together the computer can diagnose a disease and in response produce a drug for the disease in a test tube," Shapiro told Reuters.

The microscopic computer is so minuscule a trillion could fit in a drop of water. Its input, output and software are made up of DNA molecules -- which store and process encoded information about living organisms.

"Our work represents the first actual proof of concept and the first actual demonstration of a possible real-life application for this kind of computer," Shapiro added.

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