This new, energy-efficient, book-sized biocomputer, powered by protein powder, could change the way complex problems are solved!
Researchers at McGill University have developed a model of a biological supercomputer that can solve complex mathematical problems and cryptography using very little energy. Electronic computers are still limited to solving one problem at a time, despite recent advances in technology.
“For a bigger problem we need to build a bigger computer,” Dan Nikolau, chair of the department of Bioengineering at McGill, told CBC News.
At the center of the model is a 1.5 square centimeter chip, which uses myosin, molecular motors that perform mechanical work in living cells, to move strands of the protein through artificial pathways.
In a traditional computer, electrons are pushed through a chip by an electrical charge. But in a biocomputer, short strings of proteins are powered by adenosine triphosphate, the chemical that provides energy to cells in our bodies. Because biocomputers execute in parallel and work in parallel, they are driven to solve problems much faster than a traditional computer.
This is not the first research to apply parallel computing to complex problem solving. For example, DNA computing and quantum computing take a similar approach.
Developed by a team of international scientists from Canada, the US, Germany, Norway and Sweden, the new biocomputer model is energy efficient, performs many calculations simultaneously and is about the size of a book.
"A biocomputer requires less than one percent of the energy that an electronic transistor needs to perform one calculation step," coordinator and director of nanoscience at Lund University in Sweden, Heiner Linke, said in a press release.
ATP-powered biocomputers are only designed to solve a specific type of problem, but now that it has been proven to work, the scientists involved say we can create full-scale biological supercomputers and may soon see them performing complex tasks.
