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Molecular computation: RNA solutions to chess problems

2000; National Academy of Sciences; Volume: 97; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1073/pnas.97.4.1385

1091-6490

Dirk Faulhammer, Anthony R. Cukras, Richard J. Lipton, Laura F. Landweber,

RNA and protein synthesis mechanisms

We have expanded the field of “DNA computers” to RNA and present a general approach for the solution of satisfiability problems. As an example, we consider a variant of the “Knight problem,” which asks generally what configurations of knights can one place on an n × n chess board such that no knight is attacking any other knight on the board. Using specific ribonuclease digestion to manipulate strands of a 10-bit binary RNA library, we developed a molecular algorithm and applied it to a 3 × 3 chessboard as a 9-bit instance of this problem. Here, the nine spaces on the board correspond to nine “bits” or placeholders in a combinatorial RNA library. We recovered a set of “winning” molecules that describe solutions to this problem.