Parallel molecular computation
Techniques for quickly executing lengthy computations by the use of molecular parallelism are described. It is demonstrated that molecular computations can be done using short DNA strands by more or less conventional biotechnology engineering techniques within a small number of laboratory steps. Two abstract models of molecular computation are proposed. The first, the Parallel Associative Memory Model, is a very high level model which includes a Parallel Associative Matching operation, that appears to improve the power of molecular parallelism beyond the operations previously considered by Lipton (1994). A Recombinant DNA Model is also proposed which is a low level model that allows operations that are abstractions of very well understood recombinant DNA operations and provides a representation, herein called complex, for the relevant structural properties of DNA.
