Training a molecular automaton to play a game

• Published in: Nature nanotechnology Vol. 5; no. 11; pp. 773 - 777
• Main Authors: Pei, Renjun, Stefanovic, Darko, Liu, Manhong, Stojanovic, Milan N, Matamoros, Elizabeth
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01.11.2010
• Subjects: 639/925/350; 639/925/926/1047; 639/925/927/339; 639/925/929/115; Artificial Intelligence; Chemistry and Materials Science; Chemistry, Organic - methods; Computers, Molecular; Cybernetics; Game Theory; letter; Materials Science; Nanotechnology; Nanotechnology - methods; Nanotechnology and Microengineering; Nucleic Acid Conformation; Oligonucleotides - chemical synthesis; Oligonucleotides - chemistry
• DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2010.194
• ISSN: 1748-3387

Research at the interface between chemistry and cybernetics has led to reports of ‘programmable molecules’, but what does it mean to say ‘we programmed a set of solution-phase molecules to do X’? A survey of recently implemented solution-phase circuitry 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 indicates that this statement could be replaced with ‘we pre-mixed a set of molecules to do X and functional subsets of X’. These hard-wired mixtures are then exposed to a set of molecular inputs, which can be interpreted as being keyed to human moves in a game, or as assertions of logical propositions. In nucleic acids-based systems, stemming from DNA computation 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , these inputs can be seen as generic oligonucleotides. Here, we report using reconfigurable 21 , 22 , 23 nucleic acid catalyst-based units to build a multipurpose reprogrammable molecular automaton that goes beyond single-purpose ‘hard-wired’ molecular automata. The automaton covers all possible responses to two consecutive sets of four inputs (such as four first and four second moves for a generic set of trivial two-player two-move games). This is a model system for more general molecular field programmable gate array (FPGA)-like devices that can be programmed by example, which means that the operator need not have any knowledge of molecular computing methods. Nucleic acid catalysts can be used to build a multipurpose molecular automaton that can be programmed by example.