Brownian DNA Computing

Silicon-based computing faces limitations in energy consumption, parallelism and the possibility to interact with living systems, prompting interest in biomolecular alternatives such as DNA computing. Here we present Brownian DNA computing that uses coupled molecular balances to form a molecular processing unit (MPU) on a DNA origami platform. The designed MPUs perform Boolean logic operations of increasing complexity including a half-adder and multiple-input gates. Distinguishing different inputs by the intensity of single-molecule probes reporting on the state of the MPU enables non-Boolean logic with two-input four-output operations directly integrating all basic logic operations in a single computational gate. The presented Brownian DNA computing approach may offer energy-efficient computation and serve as a foundation for molecular computing, sensing, and soft robotics.