The bacteria is smarter than joo and joo and joo

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RightIsWrong

Diamond Member
Apr 29, 2005
5,649
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I found this and thought that it was worthy of an ATOT thread. I know that standards are high here...but this should squeak in.

A new living computer, bred from E. coli bacteria instead of stamped from silica, has for the first time successfully solved a classic mathematical puzzle known as the Burnt Pancake Problem.

While this bacteria-based computer is more proof of concept than practical, a living computer might one day solve complex mathematical problems faster than silicon supercomputers.

"The computing potential of DNA far exceeds that of any other material," said Karmella Haynes, a researcher at Davidson University and lead study author. "If we figure out how to increase that capacity in a practical manner we will have much more computing power."

The Burnt Pancake Problem works like this: Imagine you are a diner owner. To promote your delicious fare, you want to create a golden pyramid of pancakes. Using a spatula, you have to rearrange an existing stack of different-sized pancakes, each of which is burned on one side. The aim is to sort the stack so the largest pancake is on the bottom and all pancakes are golden side up.

Each flip reverses the order and the orientation (i.e. which side of the pancake is facing up) of one or several consecutive pancakes. You want to stack them properly in the fewest number of flips.

If there are only a few pancakes, it's a relatively easy problem to solve. But as the number of pancakes increases, the possible number of solutions skyrockets.

For six pancakes, there are 46,080 possible solutions. For 12 pancakes, there are 1.9 trillion permutations.

A traditional, silica-based computer would run through every single possible solution to the problem, one at a time.

In a biology-based computer, each bacterium becomes a single computer that runs a different part of the problem simultaneously. Since a million bacteria-based computers can fit into a single drop of water, all of them working together could speed up the calculations dramatically.

Obviously E. coli can't flip real pancakes. Instead E. coli flip a section of their DNA. The "spatula" is a protein called flagellin, which was taken from salmonella bacteria and injected into the E. coli bacteria.

In salmonella, flagellin works like an on/off switch, determining which of two proteins will be produced to help hide, and keep alive, the bacteria when it infects an organism. In the computer, the proteins make a bacterium resistant to antibiotics and keep it alive -- but only if it solves the problem. If a bacterium can't solve the problem, i.e. flip the pancake into the correct order, antibiotics kill it.

So far the computer has only solved a two-pancake problem which, admittedly, isn't terribly difficult. Creating bacteria that can solve the Burnt Pancake Problem using multiple pancakes will be difficult, said Haynes.

Once a solution is found, however, it will be cheap to reproduce.

"All it would cost is about a tablespoon of sugar," said Haynes.

Don't expect to see a bacterial super computer at Best Buy any time soon though. According to Tom Knight, a synthetic biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "this will open the door to a wide variety of biological computing."

But that includes only simple computing, like telling researchers how many times they have encountered a certain chemical.

"This won't make your Xbox run faster," said Knight.
Click to expand...
 
allisolm

allisolm

Elite Member
Administrator
Jan 2, 2001
25,340
5,007
136
Sorry. The high standards here preclude reading anything of that length without cliff's notes.
 
M

MegaVovaN

Diamond Member
May 20, 2005
4,131
0
0
Cliffs:

bacteria solves math problem
bacteria has high computing potential
bacteria cheap to reproduce
bacteria has high potential
 
Braznor

Braznor

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2005
4,767
435
126
Bacteria based computers will give cyber viruses a run for their money.
 
mb

mb

Lifer
Jun 27, 2004
10,233
2
71
"This won't make your Xbox run faster," said Knight.

WTF is the point then?
 
P

punchkin

Banned
Dec 13, 2007
852
0
0
Originally posted by: RightIsWrong
I found this and thought that it was worthy of an ATOT thread. I know that standards are high here...but this should squeak in.

A new living computer, bred from E. coli bacteria instead of stamped from silica, has for the first time successfully solved a classic mathematical puzzle known as the Burnt Pancake Problem.

While this bacteria-based computer is more proof of concept than practical, a living computer might one day solve complex mathematical problems faster than silicon supercomputers.

"The computing potential of DNA far exceeds that of any other material," said Karmella Haynes, a researcher at Davidson University and lead study author. "If we figure out how to increase that capacity in a practical manner we will have much more computing power."

The Burnt Pancake Problem works like this: Imagine you are a diner owner. To promote your delicious fare, you want to create a golden pyramid of pancakes. Using a spatula, you have to rearrange an existing stack of different-sized pancakes, each of which is burned on one side. The aim is to sort the stack so the largest pancake is on the bottom and all pancakes are golden side up.

Each flip reverses the order and the orientation (i.e. which side of the pancake is facing up) of one or several consecutive pancakes. You want to stack them properly in the fewest number of flips.

If there are only a few pancakes, it's a relatively easy problem to solve. But as the number of pancakes increases, the possible number of solutions skyrockets.

For six pancakes, there are 46,080 possible solutions. For 12 pancakes, there are 1.9 trillion permutations.

A traditional, silica-based computer would run through every single possible solution to the problem, one at a time.

In a biology-based computer, each bacterium becomes a single computer that runs a different part of the problem simultaneously. Since a million bacteria-based computers can fit into a single drop of water, all of them working together could speed up the calculations dramatically.

Obviously E. coli can't flip real pancakes. Instead E. coli flip a section of their DNA. The "spatula" is a protein called flagellin, which was taken from salmonella bacteria and injected into the E. coli bacteria.

In salmonella, flagellin works like an on/off switch, determining which of two proteins will be produced to help hide, and keep alive, the bacteria when it infects an organism. In the computer, the proteins make a bacterium resistant to antibiotics and keep it alive -- but only if it solves the problem. If a bacterium can't solve the problem, i.e. flip the pancake into the correct order, antibiotics kill it.

So far the computer has only solved a two-pancake problem which, admittedly, isn't terribly difficult. Creating bacteria that can solve the Burnt Pancake Problem using multiple pancakes will be difficult, said Haynes.

Once a solution is found, however, it will be cheap to reproduce.

"All it would cost is about a tablespoon of sugar," said Haynes.

Don't expect to see a bacterial super computer at Best Buy any time soon though. According to Tom Knight, a synthetic biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "this will open the door to a wide variety of biological computing."

But that includes only simple computing, like telling researchers how many times they have encountered a certain chemical.

"This won't make your Xbox run faster," said Knight.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

Misleading thread title. I can flip three pancakes.
 
SagaLore

SagaLore

Elite Member
Dec 18, 2001
24,036
21
81
Thats an interesting way to do computations, but I'd think it would be more productive if you didn't have to kill them to get the answer. Perhaps they should work with chloroplasts and light...

So these guys are merging 2 of the bacteria that are responsible for making people sick. Great! Next thing we know, they'll get loose, and set up calculators in our digestive tracts.
 
Fenixgoon

Fenixgoon

Lifer
Jun 30, 2003
33,389
12,991
136
i disagree. my body is smarter. why? because it's kicked the shit out of every virus and bacteria that's tried to infect me! :beer::D
 
mb

mb

Lifer
Jun 27, 2004
10,233
2
71
Originally posted by: RESmonkey
Originally posted by: mb
"This won't make your Xbox run faster," said Knight.

WTF is the point then?
Click to expand...

I pray that's sarcasm.
Click to expand...

No, why would it be? Just going from 90nm chips to 65nm chips in the Xbox360 isn't enough.
 
C

Chris27

Member
Sep 19, 2005
140
0
0
I did these kind of problems in like the 1st week of a freshman CS course (except the pancakes were buttered side up :p). Computers have solved up to like the 14th pancake number.
 
9

91TTZ

Lifer
Jan 31, 2005
14,374
1
0
"This won't make your Xbox run faster," said Knight.

This idea is useless.

/thread.
 
Jeff7

Jeff7

Lifer
Jan 4, 2001
41,596
20
81
Originally posted by: punchkin
Misleading thread title. I can flip three pancakes.
Click to expand...
Pancakes. Pancake mix. Pancake mix is used in waffles.
Now I want to make waffles.

 
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