Abstract

This paper introduces a new model of computation that employs the tools of molecular biology whose in vitro implementation is far more error-resistant than extant proposals. We describe an abstraction of the model which lends itself to natural algorithmic description, particularly for problems in the complexity class NP . In addition we describe a number of linear-time algorithms within our model, particularly for NP -complete problems. We describe an in vitro realisation of the model and conclude with a discussion of future work. 1 Introduction The idea that living cells and molecular complexes can be viewed as potential machinic components dates back to the late 1950s, when Richard Feynman delivered his famous paper [4] describing "sub-microscopic" computers. More recently, several papers [1, 10, 16] (also see [7, 13]) have advocated the realisation of massively parallel computation using the techniques and chemistry of molecular biology. Adleman describes how a computational...

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