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Moore’s Law

I have seen some interesting blogs regarding this topic, implying that Moore’s law is dying out and this end might become true, if we don’t shift our focus towards new methods for increasing computing power. The law states that we are creating ever exponentially increasing computing power, which is faster, has more capabilities and that we will pay less for it. The number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit were expected to double every two years. However, we are reaching a physical limit for the size of these transistors (Tardi, 2020).

Limits of transistors

Microchips contain modules, which contains logic gates and logic gates contain transistors, which makes transistors the simplest form of a data processor in computers. In an essence all the computing power relates back to these transistors in microchips. Transistors are currently reaching the size of an atom and are currently 14 nanometres. To put this in perspective; this 500 times smaller than one red blood cell of a human body. This means that we are approaching a barrier for technological progress. One answer to this problem has already been created but is not available for you and me, namely Quantum Computing. Quantum computing uses superposition and entanglement to increase computing power and we’re not even close to finding its limit yet, thus Moore’s law might survive for a longer period, in a different way than that he first envisioned (Kurzgesagt); (IBM).

DNA computing

However, I’m not writing this to copy the other blog and talk about quantum computing. I want to introduce you to something way cooler; DNA computing. In a simple way DNA computing using DNA, biochemistry and biological molecular hardware instead of the traditional silicon-hardware. The perks of DNA computing over quantum computing are it has less stability constraints and it can even be as powerful if not more powerful. More importantly DNA computing can be a relatively cheap and it is very scalable. DNA strands can have infinite combinations, because molecules can be added to the equation, which means that the power of DNA computing is also limitless. The biggest problem is that it is still very, very slow. The applications in data storage however are unimaginable. If you would consider that an entire human being is created from DNA in our cells, then what amounts of data are we able to store in synthetic DNA? Our whole body is composed of a very long sequence of some letters, which make up our DNA. The same goes for operations performed in computers, which are sequences of zero’s and one’s. How far will this technology reach?

Eventually DNA computing and quantum computing might be combined, where DNA strands are attached to gates to created evolvable circuits. In this case the benefits of both technologies are combined where the powerful and fast quantum computers meet the evolvable DNA strands. This results in new capabilities of computing power beyond our imagination (Deaton).

 

References:

Deaton, R., (unknown). DNA and Quantum Computers. http://dl.acm.org/ft_gateway.cfm?id=2955419&type=pdf

IBM, (unknown). The DNA Transistor. IBM. https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/dnatransistor/

Kurzgesagt, (2015). Quantum Computers Explained – Limits of Human Technology. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhHMJCUmq28

Loefler, J., (2019) What is DNA Computing, How Does it Work, and Why it’s Such a Big Deal. Interesting Engineering. https://interestingengineering.com/what-is-dna-computing-how-does-it-work-and-why-its-such-a-big-deal#:~:text=There%20is%20no%20limit%20to,a%20time%20as%20needed%20to

Tardi, C., (2020). Moore’s Law. Investopedia. Accessed via https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/mooreslaw.asp#:~:text=Moore’s%20Law%20refers%20to%20Moore’s,will%20pay%20less%20for%20them.

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Humans have been and always will be experimenting in order to push our own boundaries of knowledge forward. No field of study is left untouched and especially not in Bioscience. After the discovery of DNA people around the world were intrigued with this new finding, and experimentations followed. It started out with simple experiments in 1960, where scientists tried to change the DNA code of plants by exposing them to nuclear radiation. They hoped to find some useful mutations through sheer luck, there was no way for the scientist to control the DNA structure change at this point. In the decades that followed, scientist performed all kinds of experiments on plants and animals as well. The first genetic modified food that was introduced to the market was the Savr Flavr tomato, which was supposed to stay longer ripe (Leary, 1994).
People saw lots of opportunities in genetic modification, but until recently it was very expensive, and experiments took countless hours of work. A new technology disrupted the status quo, since it decreased cost with 99% and experiments would now only take up a few weeks. The new gene editing technology is called CRISPR, the best-known method is CRIPR CAS-9 which, makes use of the CAS-9 protein in editing DNA. The technology can cut and replace certain parts of a DNA code in every cell and microbe, which enables us to adjust the genetic code of humans as well. This has wonderful applications like controlling genetic diseases. The disease is caused by a small error in the DNA code, but CRISPR CAS-9 can cut the code and replace it with correct DNA (Kurzgesagt, 2016). While this is a fantastic application by itself and will revolutionize health care as we know it right, this post will trigger you to focus on a different aspect of the technology; creating designer babies.
While curing existing genetic diseases and even cancer sound great, another topic might leave you more flabbergasted. The technology allows scientists in the future to modify humans through editing embryos. While at first this might be seen as an ethical process since we can modify babies to be immune to certain diseases and erasing genetic diseases from our human code as opposed to editing cells from older people, this will cause the genes to be passed through to new generations. The process will be slow, but it will also be limitless. If babies can be modified in such a way that they won´t be prone to certain diseases, why not give them more enhancements like increased intelligence. This is where it starts to get tricky and might become unethical. Once the DNA is modified and spread through offspring it is hard to undo the change without any involvement of coercion. Even though this technology is still in its early stages, the impact it can have in the future is already clearly visible (Ball, 2017). By not restricting this technology for governmental purposes only, multi billionaires can in fact design offspring with genetic advantages relative to the average human, since they have “unlimited” funds. While the applications are great, the implications are evenly dangerous and certain policies must be created to restrain the limitless possibilities and guide the technology to towards an ethical path.
Sources:
Ball, B., 2017. Designer babies: an ethical horror waiting to happen?. The Guardian. Online. Accessed on 23/09/2020 via https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jan/08/designer-babies-ethical-horror-waiting-to-happen
Kurzgesagt. 2016. Genetic Engineering Will Change Everything Forever – CRISPR. Youtube. Online. Accessed on 23/09/2020 via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAhjPd4uNFY.
Leary, W., 1994. May. F.D.A. Approves Altered Tomato That Will Remain Fresh Longer. The New York Times. Online. Accessed on 23/09/2020 via https://www-nytimes-com.eur.idm.oclc.org/1994/05/19/us/fda-approves-altered-tomato-that-will-remain-fresh-longer.html
Ramirez, V., 2018. Designer Babies, and Their Babies: How AI and Genomics Will Impact Reproduction. Singularityhub. Online. Accessed on 23/09/2020 via https://singularityhub.com/2018/11/14/designer-babies-and-their-babies-where-ai-and-genomics-could-take-us/