No label defined (Q4246786)

There are analogies between the way computers process and analyze data and the way data is handled by living organisms. Most biological data are predominantly in the form of nucleic acids, almost exclusively DNA. DNA data are at least two-fold redundant because of the two complementary strands, and they are often multi-fold redundant because multiple copies of DNA molecules are usually present. Thus DNA data are relatively error resistant. The sequence of DNA bases, which is the information stored in DNA, also provides a way for the specific purification of DNA subsets. This allows DNA to be handled as very complex mixtures of species with the ability to sort things out afterwards. Thus, DNA-based manipulations can sometimes be handled as highly parallel strategies. We will introduce the reader to the general properties of DNA and to some of the methods used for manipulating and studying DNA molecules. We will show how DNA properties allow parallel strategies to be used for direct biological experiments, and we will also speculate on possible future applications of such strategies which go beyond pure biological applications. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0912.00016].