Biomolecular Computing

Director:  Max Garzon
Website: http://bmc.memphis.edu

Biomolecular computing (BMC) leverages interactions among thousands or billions of biomolecules representing e.g., RNA strands and/or DNA complexes, including their reactions to conditions such as temperature, salinity, and/or electric fields. BMC aims to discover general principles of interaction for parallel computing, modeling, and data science. These principles enable better understanding of emergent behavior from innumerable local interactions (as reflected by well known models of duplex formation, or combinatorial models that have been shown to be good approximations thereof) compounding over time and space, as exhibited by natural biological systems.

Successful prototypes of next-generation microarrays have been developed for DNA-based computing, bioinformatics and abiotic data processing. New models of self-assembly of resistive electric circuits capable of self-assembled, self-controlled growth and self-replication have been developed, while several others are under development.