Professor Ehud Shapiro and researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute constructed the world’s smallest biomolecular computer a few years ago.
Now they have programmed it to analyse biological information to detect and treat prostate cancer and a form of lung cancer in laboratory experiments.
“We’ve taken our earlier molecular computer and augmented it with an input and output module. Together the computer can diagnose a disease and in response produce a drug for the disease in a test tube,” Shapiro told Reuters.
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Ron, how good to hear from you!
As to the Feynman-9 in the Reuters story, I don’t know if I’m ready for it. I may have to have some more coffee first.
He beat me to it. There’s also a story at <a href=”http://www.nature.com/nsu/0… Science Updates</a>.
It’s only been tested so far in chemical solutions. The next step is to try to get it into cells. There are ways to get stuff across the membrane, but I’m wondering about the usefulness of retroviruses. They’d be particularly good at infecting cancer cells.
Retroviruses? Bah! Bacteriophage are the way to go! In monster cells! (By the way, Ron, do you have a link to that earlier AofA technology siting about the macromolecular human-engineered cell?