Treffer: Solving Intractable Problems with DNA Computing

We survey the theoretical use of DNA computing to solve intractable problems. We also discuss the relationship between problems in DNA computing and questions in complexity theory. 1. Introduction Adleman's pioneering experiment [1] opened the possibility that moderately large instances of NP-complete problems might be solved via techniques from molecular biology. Since then numerous papers have explored more efficient molecular algorithms for particular problems in NP [27, 10, 3, 30, 8, 20, 21, 18], molecular solutions to PSPACE-complete problems [7, 37], and fault tolerant molecular algorithms [12, 25]. Other papers have examined the relationships between molecular complexity classes and classical complexity classes [38, 19]. We will survey some of these advances in this paper. For previous surveys in DNA computing, see [24, 36, 34, 32]. 2. Biological Background DNA is the storage medium for genetic information. It is composed of units called nucleotides, distinguished by the che.