PROBLEM UNDERSTANDING AND LITERATURE SURVEY

PROBLEM UNDERSTANDING

PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION:

 CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING:
One of the more enduring and important problems in complexity theory, the "polynomial
time computing solution enque is still of great importance today. More than the
theoretical implications that would result from its proof or refutation, the classification of
problems by their minimal complexity class is would be helpful information for algorithm
designers attempting to find efficient solutions to real-life problems. With or without this
knowledge, though, it is important to be able to actually these problems at a reasonable
expense (be it measured in time, hardware cost, or whatever dimension is needed). It is
for this reason that alternate methods of computation have been formalized and, to a
lesser extent, implemented to solve problems.

 RELATIONSHIP TO PROBLEM:
One recent example of such a method is what is known as DNA computing, which
attempts to solve these problems by taking advantage of the storage capacity of our
genetic code. Since the field's genesis in 1994, the practice of DNA computing has grown
significantly in both the number of problems that it might be used to solve and our
understanding of its power. It is the purpose of this paper to describe DNA computing,
from Adleman's initial experiments to the current state of the field, in order to get
perspective on it's future viability. It is assumed that, before undertaking this paper, the
reader has some familiarity with the basics of DNA, particularly the natural tendency of a
strand and its complement to form the famous double helix structure of Watson and
Crick.

PROBLEM SPECIFICATION:
 PROBLEM DEFINITION:
  OBJECTIVE:
The main aim is to generate DNA sequences that represent all paths through the
graph, one must first decide upon a DNA-based representation for the vertices and
edges that comprise it. The design of the edges will follow the design of the vertices,
so we choose to designate unique DNA strands for each vertex. The actual length of
these strands depends, of course, on the size of the set V, and is chosen such that no
two strands will have long common sub-strings. Were it not for this restriction, which
will be explained in a later section, one could represent each of n vertices by a DNA
strand of length log4(n).

 JUSTIFICATION:

This problem can be solved by generating DNA sequences that represent all paths
through the graph and by using DNA –based representation for the vertices and edges.

PROBLEM SOLVING STRATAGIES:

SOURCE OF INFORMATION:
DNA computers can't be found at your local electronics store yet. The technology is still in
development, and didn't even exist as a concept a decade ago. In 1994, Leonard Adleman
introduced the idea of using DNA to solve complex mathematical problems. Adleman, a
computer scientist at the University of Southern California, came to the conclusion that DNA
had computational potential after reading the book "Molecular Biology of the Gene," written
by James Watson, who co-discovered the structure of DNA in 1953. In fact, DNA is very
similar to a computer hard drive in how it stores permanent information about your genes.

Adleman is often called the inventor of DNA computers. His article in a 1994 issue of the
journal Scienceoutlined how to use DNA to solve a well-known mathematical problem,
called the directed Hamilton Path problem, also known as the "traveling salesman"
problem. The goal of the problem is to find the shortest route between a number of cities,
going through each city only once. As you add more cities to the problem, the problem
becomes more difficult. Adleman chose to find the shortest route between seven cities.
 PROBLEM DESCRIPTION:

PROBLEM STATEMENT:

METHODOLOGY:
The field of DNA computing is generally considered to have begun with Leonard Adleman's
1994 experiment involving the Hamiltonian Path (HP) problem. Simply stated, the HP
problem is to determine whether or not a graph, with fixed starting and ending vertices, has
some sequence of steps by which every vertex in the graph is visited exactly once. Formally,
an instance of HP takes the form (V, E, s, d), where V and E are the sets of vertices and edges
that define the graph's topology and s and d are the start and destination vertices.

Since this example has six vertices and the DNA alphabet only contains the With this
representation in mind, we create test tubes that have many multiples of the strands
representing each edge and each vertex. Once these tubes are mixed together, legal paths
through the graph are generated by the mutual attraction of strings and their complements by
hydrogen bonding.

letters A, T, C, and G, it is necessary to have each vertex represented by at least two

characters. We expand this to eight characters in order to avoid the problem of long common
sub-strings, and denote each vertex by a DNA strand as listed in table 1. The edges,
furthermore, are represented as in table 1. Notice that the structure of the strands representing
each edge follows from the strands representing the vertices as described above.
Table 1 - Representation of Verticies and Edges from Figure 1

Vertex DNA Strand Edge DNA Strand

A ATCGAGCT A -> B TCGAACCT

B TGGACTAC B -> C GATGCTCT

C GAGACCAG C -> D GGTCGCTA

D CGATGCAT D -> F CGTACGAT

E AGCTAGCT F -> E CTGATCGA

F GCTAGACT E -> F TCGACGAT

E -> A TCGATAGC

E -> B TCGAACCT

B -> F GATGCGAT

CONSTRIANTS:
The constraints of the polynomial DNA computing analysis is that it consumes lot of input
from user and may not work that efficiently on very small texts.

LITERATURE SURVEY

REFERENCE OVERVIEW
(1)ADLEMAN THEORM:
In 1994, Leonard M. Adleman solved an unremarkable computational problem with a
remarkable technique. The type of problem that Adleman solved is formally known as a
directed Hamiltonian Path (HP) problem, but is more popularly recognized as a variant of the
so-called “traveling salesman problem.” A Hamiltonian Path in a connected graph is defined
as a closed walk that traverses every vertex of graph ‘G’ exactly once, except the starting
vertex at which the walk also terminates (Feldkamp et al., 2006; Li et al., 2005; Grover and
Mathies, 2005).
(2) MARKOV CHAINS:
Various algorithms performing computations over Markov chains have been developed.
These determine sequence power of the transition matrix of a Markov chain and their
properties of convergence. Some other algorithms help enable to estimate this limit. These
also allow the computation of a limit using DNA computation. The states and the transition
probabilities have been encoded using strands of DNA for generating paths of the Markov
chain (Cardona et al., 2005).

(3)SEQUENCE COMPLEXITY:

It has been noticed that randomly generated oligonucleotide populations serve as pools for
selecting non-cross-hybridizing sequences, for nanoscale self-assembly and biological and
biomedical applications, as well as for DNA computation applications. Various nonlinear
kinetic models are present for the complexity estimation of large unknown polynucleotide
populations. Models are used to estimate the sequence complexity of the random 20 base-pair
population after in vitro renaturation experiments. The kinetic behaviors of the random
20mers can also be evaluated with in vitro thermal melting experiments (Garzon et al., 1999).

(4)STICKER MODEL:
It is essentially easier creating an initial data pool covering answers at first place followed by
a series of selection process to destroy the incorrect ones. The surviving DNA sequences are
read as the solutions to the problem. But, algorithms are limited to the problem size. As the
number of parameters in the studied problem grows, the algorithm becomes impossible
owing to the tremendous initial data pool size. The solution sequences are built in parts to
satisfy one clause in a step, and eventually solve the whole Boolean formula after a number
of steps. The size of data pool grows from one sort of molecule to the number of solution
assignments (Yang and Yang, 2005).

(5)TRAVELLING SALESMAN PROBLEM:

DNA encoding method can be used to represent numerical values and a biased molecular
algorithm based on the thermodynamic properties of DNA. DNA strands are designed to
encode real values by variation of their melting temperatures. The thermodynamic properties
of DNA are used for effective local search of optimal solutions using biochemical techniques,
such as denaturation temperature gradient polymerase chain reaction and temperature
gradient gel electrophoresis. The algorithm is applied to the traveling salesman problem, an
instance of optimization problems on weighted graphs (Kim et al., 2005).

(6)MOLECULAR NANOTECHNOLOGY:

Researchers have discovered DNA sequences and structures with new functional properties
for preventing the expression of harmful genes. Bioinformaticians design rigid DNA
structures that serve as scaffolds for the organization of matter at the molecular scale, and can
build simple DNA-computing devices, diagnostic machines and DNA motors. The
integration of biological & engineering advances offers great potential for therapeutic &
diagnostic applications (Condon, 2006)

(7)CELLULAR COMPUTING:
Cells perform computation by reading and writing DNA using processes that modify
sequences at the DNA or RNA level. Two ciliated protozoans of the genus Oxytricha had
solved a potentially harder problem using DNA several million years earlier. The solution to
this problem, which occurs during the process of gene unscrambling, represents one of
nature’s ingenious solutions to the problem of the creation of genes. RNA editing can also be
viewed as a computational process offering a second algorithm for the construction of
functional genes from encrypted pieces of the genome (Landweber and Kari, 1999).

(8)AUTOMONUS COMPUTING:
A one-pot autonomous DNA computation machine is proposed that is based on
photochemical gate transition. Here, photoligation via 5-carboxyvinyldeoxyuridene (cvU)
containing oligodeoxynucleotides and photocleavage via carbazole - modified
oligodeoxynucleotides, were employed. The binary digit additions are carried out by onetime
irradiation at 366 nm in the single test tube. The fluorescence readout by the DNA chip was
in good agreement with the correct answer of binary digit additions (Ogasawara et al., 2008).

(9)CLUSTERING APPROACHES:

Clustering is used for revealing a structure in highly dimensional data and arriving at a
collection of meaningful relationships in data and information granules. DNA computation
has also been used for developing clustering techniques. This is very useful while dealing
with huge data sets, unknown number of clusters and encountering a heterogeneous character
of available data. It is shown the essential components of the clustering technique through the
corresponding mechanisms of DNA computation (Bakar et al., 2008).