orDiNAteur

DNA holds the code for all living things – and now it can solve square-root problems too. Researchers have built the largest and most sophisticated system yet that performs calculations using DNA. The design of the latest 'DNA computer' – which uses DNA molecules rather than silicon chips to perform computations — is seen as a significant advance for the field of molecular computing. It demonstrates how biochemical circuits might be built on increasingly large and complex scales, bringing the prospect of long-touted potential applications such as disease detection a step closer.