Direct-Proportional Length-Based DNA Computing for Shortest Path Problem

Deoxyribonucleic Acid or DNA computing has emerged as an interdisciplinary field that draws together chemistry, molecular biology, computer science, and mathematics. From the DNA computing point of view, it has been proven that it is possible to solve weighted graph problems by exploiting some characteristics of DNA such as length, concentration, and melting temperature. In this paper, we present an alternative direct-proportional length-based DNA computing approach whereby the cost of each path is encoded by the length of the oligonucleotides in a proportional way. The advantage is such that, after the hybridization and ligation reactions, gel electrophoresis can be performed to separate the respective DNA duplex according to their length which directly decodes the results. In addition to this advantage, the reliability of the proposed approach can be enhanced as only the general and well-known bio-molecular laboratory operations are employed during the computation.