Thanks to Dee!

http://www.cbc.ca/news/mcgill-bio-super-computer-1.3466095

> Biological supercomputer model could change how we solve complex problems

> Massive supercomputers use huge amounts of energy and require their own power plants to operate. Biological supercomputers have the potential to be much smaller and more energy-efficient.

> Massive supercomputers use huge amounts of energy and require their own power plants to operate. Biological supercomputers have the potential to be much smaller and more energy-efficient. (Jean-Christophe Bott/Associated Press)

> Researchers at McGill University have helped to develop a model of a biological supercomputer that can solve complex mathematical problems using very little energy.

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> Despite recent advances in computer technology, electronic computers are still limited to solving one problem at a time.

> "For a bigger problem we have to make a larger computer," Dan Nicolau, chair of the department of bioengineering at McGill, told CBC News.

> That's why supercomputers are housed in rooms the size of basketball courts and often require their own power plants to function.

> Strings of proteins of different lengths travel around the microchip that powers a new model biological supercomputer. (Till Korten/McGill University )

> By contrast the new model biocomputer — developed by a team of international scientists from Canada, the U.S., Germany, Norway and Sweden — is energy-efficient, performs multiple calculations simultaneously and is roughly the size of a book.

> "A biocomputer requires less than one per cent of the energy an electronic transistor needs to carry out one calculation step," study co-ordinator Heiner Linke, director of nanoscience at Lund University in Sweden, said in a press release.

> The findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

> At the core of the model is a 1.5 square-centimetre microchip, which uses myosin, molecular motors that carry out mechanical tasks in living cells, to move protein filaments along artificial paths.

> In a traditional computer, electrons are propelled through a chip by an electrical charge. But in the biocomputer, short strings of proteins are powered by Adenosine triphosphate, the chemical that provides energy to the cells in our bodies.

> This is not the first research to apply parallel computing to complex problem-solving. DNA computing and quantum computing, for example, take a similar approach.

> "However, these approaches have not proven, so far, to be scalable and practical from a fabrication and operational perspective," the researchers note.

> The idea for the protein-powered biocomputer began with a conversation between Nicolau and his son, Dan Nicolau Jr., a mathematician and first author of the study.
> fibres

> Actin fibres, labelled in green, moving across a collection of myosin. (Nicolau lab, McGill University)

> Asked what it was like to work with his son to develop this technology, Nicolau laughed.

> "We are perfectly complementary.He knows very little about engineering ... and I have not that much mathematical knowledge either."

> So far, the model is only designed to solve a specific type of problem, but now that they've proven it works, Nicolau said it's just a matter of time before we see full-scale biological supercomputers.