IT for Synthetic Biology and DNA Nanotechnology

Somewhere between the studies of information technology
and organic chemistry, researchers are trying to make tiny
robots out of DNA molecules.

By Masami Hagiya, Fumiaki Tanaka, and Ibuki Kawamata DOI: 10.1145/1836543.1836551

Information technology (IT), with computer science at its core, is essentially an engineering discipline for making computers. However, its horizons are expanding from traditional computers to various kinds of machines for more general use, such as mobile phones and PDAs—all kinds of devices with embedded computers for information processing and communication. Robots are very similar. In fact, IT has a close relationship with robotics, and the phrase “information and robot technology” reflects efforts to merge IT with robotics.

 

One goal of robotics is to make autonomous systems that can operate in the real world without specific orders from human beings. Robots that clean floors while wandering from room to room have made the first step toward this goal. They are not given any definite orders, but they clean rooms operating on their own judgment.

In general, robots are made of sensors, computers, and actuators. Sensors are devices that accept input from the outside environment, including physical input such as temperature, light, electromagnetic waves, sound, gravity, pressure, and oscillation. Actuators are devices that produce output in the outside environment. Various kinds of output exist, but the most common is robot motion. Sensors and actuators in robots are usually composed of motors, semiconductors, and electrical circuits. Computers are also made of electrical circuits, with CPU chips at their core.

This article is not about making
ordinary robots like those described
above. Some researchers in an inter-
disciplinary field somewhere between
IT and (organic) chemistry are interest-
ed in making robots out of DNA mol-
ecules. Others in an interdisciplinary
field between IT and molecular biology
are trying to convert cells such as E. coli
into robots that can do work according
to a certain design.

“Some researchers in
an interdisciplinary
field between IT and
molecular biology
are trying to convert
cells such as E. coli
into robots that can
do work according to
a certain design.”

cal input to ordinary robots. Cells also have various kinds of actuators. For example, the flagella of E. coli are motors that rotate and move cells suspended in a solution. However, the majority of the output from a cell are chemical substances.

Information processing inside a cell takes place through chemical reactions, and these reactions can form a complex network for information processing. Typical examples of such networks are genetic networks based on the promotion and repression of gene expression, and signaling networks made of cascades of protein phosphorylation.

Viruses are examples of robots that are much smaller than cells. Viruses called bacteriophage, familiar to students of molecular biology, have big heads, thin bodies and many legs, and look like spacecraft landing on the Moon. They actually try to land on the membranes of bacteria, and when they are successful in doing so, they inject their chromosomes into the body of the bacteria.

SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY

The exciting new interdisciplinary field that merges IT and molecular bi-