Foundational Aspects of Biomolecular Information and Computation

就像我们用字母表的字母来写文本，用0和1位来写计算机机器代码一样，大自然用四个基本的DNA单位(腺嘌呤、鸟嘌呤、胞嘧啶、胸腺嘧啶)以DNA链的形式写入遗传信息。DNA上编码符号信息的可能性，以及DNA链的剪切和粘贴等生化过程已被证明能够进行算术和逻辑运算的事实，导致了DNA计算领域的发展。我研究的主要目标是分析这种在DNA链上存储和操作数据的新方式，因为生物信息和生物计算在几个方面与电子信息和生物计算根本不同。最重要的是，DNA编码的信息与记忆位置无关，而是由无限小的自由漂浮的DNA链组成，由于它们的沃森-克里克互补而相互作用。

In the same way we use the letters of the alphabet to write text, and the bits 0 and 1 to write computer machine code, the four basic DNA units (Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine, Thymine) are used by Nature to write genetic information as DNA strands. The possibility of encoding symbolic information on DNA, and the fact that biochemical processes such as cut-and-paste of DNA strands have been proved to be able to perform arithmetic and logic operations, led to the development of the field of DNA computing. The primary goal of my research is to analyze this new way of storing and manipulating data on DNA strands, as bioinformation and biocomputation are fundamentally different from their electronic counterparts in several aspects. Most importantly, DNA-encoded information is not associated with a memory location but consists of infinitesimal free-floating DNA strands that interact with each other due to their Watson-Crick complementarity.