DNA computing: Molecules reach consensus.

The intersection of computer science and molecular biology is a fertile ground for new and exciting science. Two notable examples of this are molecular computing and molecular programming. Molecular computing is the use of molecules, and typically biological molecules, to create programmable autonomous computing devices1–7. Whereas molecular programming is the use of computer programming languages to describe, simulate, analyse and even engineer the behaviour of molecular systems, and typically systems made of biological molecules8–12. Writing in Nature Nanotechnology, Georg Seelig and colleagues13 at the University of Washington, Microsoft Research in Cambridge, the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, San Francisco have now shown that the fields of molecular computing and molecular programming can join forces to create programmable chemical controllers DNA COMPUTING