Molecular computers pitch talk

We can program a computer to do anything. What if we had the same power over the molecules of our bodies?

Define a molecular computer as one molecule which transforms, by random chemical reactions mediated by a collection of enzymes, into a predictable other molecule, such that the output molecule can be conceived as the result of a computation encoded in the initial molecule.

Let’s imagine how this could change our lives. For example...

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Adam meets Eve at a party. She thinks he's attractive but, wait: her sniffer ring can detect Adam' biomolecules.

 Something is wrong with Adam, according to Eve's sniffer ring, which triggers a health warning. Eve forwards the warning to Adam's phone and the party goes on.

Back home, Adam checks with his internet/health insurance provider. He files a bug report, with his biological ID and the RNA code of the suspicious biomolecule detected by the sniffer ring.

Somewhere the RNA code from the bug report and the ID are converted to a simulation written in a language which hackers love. 

The wizards debug the faulty molecular behaviour, find a solution and they convert it back to RNA code.

The code is sent to Adam's router, which is a much smaller, distant relative of a Venter printer. It can synthesize proteins from the RNA code and then emit them in the air. While the first Venter printer looked like that

Adam's router looks like a small, biologically elegant box which in emit mode expands a happy puppy tail.

The router emits these biomolecules into Adam's bedroom. Once inside Adam's body, these biomolecules will correct the faulty behaviour of Adam's metabolism. Bug solved. Adam is in perfect health.

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In order to make this real we might try the following steps.

Steps 1 and 3 are done, in principle. Step 2 is problematic, probably based on pattern search over databases of chemical reactions.

1. Build a virtual chemistry which we can program. Computers are Turing Machines. There's a memory which contains the input, output and programs. The processor reads the input and a program and writes the output in the memory.

In this virtual chemistry the input, output and programs are all molecules. There is no processor. Everything is done by those molecules via their chemical reactions. The challenge is to be able to design these molecules so that we can obtain the result we want even if we let them free to interact.

The purpose of the chemlambda project is to experiment with the limits of this freedom.

2. Simulate the virtual chemistry in Nature. There's no computer as powerful as the real world. Find for each element of the virtual chemistry a similar biomolecule, for each kind of virtual chemical reaction find a similar, real one.

In the scenario we want to correct Adam's metabolism. We could turn this problem into a similar problem in the virtual chemistry. On the virtual side, the problem would be like debugging a program.

3. Build machines able to convert from virtual chemistry back into biomolecules.

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Notes:

• Adam and Eve here are taken from The Internet of Smells
• The definition of a molecular computer is taken from Molecular computers (needs js enabled) with pdf version on (figshare) or arXiv:1811.04960 [cs.ET]
• Probably the newest part of the proposal is to use molecular patterns which embody those from Interaction Combinators or chemlambda. It is a challenge in itself to program with those, because functional programming or lambda calculus are just an inspiration.
• In order to learn how to program with graph rewrite systems, the chemlambda project has hundreds of simulations, try this (needs js enabled).
• This is the text which goes with the Chemlambda for the people slides (needs js enabled).