This multi-disciplinary SGER project involves collaborative research in the areas of biochemistry, surface chemistry, and algorithm design. The main goal of the project is to develop an approach to computation and information storage, using DNA sequences. Although this approach is both ``novel'' and ``high- risk'', there is a high potential that this new DNA/biomolecular computing approach will yield ``solutions'' to intractable/NP-complete problems. To this end, the project concentrates on: (1) Developing and characterizing complex mixtures of DNA molecules attached to surfaces, by characterizing, for the absorbed DNA molecules,(a) the attachment chemistry, (b) the hybridization chemistry, and (c)the enzymatic activity, using a variety of spectroscopic and biochemical methods; (2) Optimizing the use of the manipulations of DNA sequences in developing molecular computing strategies for solving NP-complete problems; (3)Developing new algorithms for solving the NP-complete problems; and (4) Investigating surface-based methods for high density storage and retrieval of information by DNA hybridization chemistry.
