Ali Kuru

Moore’s Law assumes that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double every two years, which means chip makers have to squeeze an increasing number of transistors onto every chip. According to Wired Gadgets, IBM is experimenting DNA Origami to create smaller chips;

Researchers at IBM have made a significant breakthrough in their quest to combine DNA strands with conventional lithographic techniques to create tiny circuit boards. The breakthrough, which allows for the DNA structures to be positioned precisely on substrates, could help shrink computer chips to about a 6-nanometer scale. Intel’s latest chips, by comparison, are on a 32-nanometer scale.

“The idea is to combine leading edge lithography that can offer feature size of 25 nanometers with some chemical magic to access much smaller dimensions,” says Robert Allen, senior manager of chemistry and materials at IBM Almaden Research. “This allows us to place nano objects with 6-nanometer resolution. You don’t have a hope of doing that with lithography today.”

Giving DNA to our computers? I guess we can start counting down for Skynet after that :)

Just found an interesting video of DNA transcription process, created with LEGO animation :)

The bright orange subunits are the mRNA nucleotides. In transcription, the single stranded messenger RNA (a copy of the DNA gene) is produced by the base paring rule. The mRNA then exits the nucleus through a pore in the nuclear membrane.

[MIT TechTV via BoingBoing Gadgets]