Talk:Biological computing

Suggest merge
I think that this article is explaining same thing of DNA computing. --Morio 04:34, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Bio-computers do not necessarily have to be DNA-based. This is a very brief page, with no supporting references, and I would strongly urge against any merger with the DNA computing page.


 * Merge to DNA computing. As it stands, the article defines "biocomputing" as the same thing as "DNA computing" and contains no extra information.  It's possible that biocomputation is a broader concept but the current article makes no mention of it.  Antony-22 04:41, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Biological "Computers" have been created with Leech Neurons in the past for example. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/358822.stm A Biocomputer is any device capable of performing computation using biological material and would not be necesarily be limited to just using DNA Harani66 13:13, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Reference Needed?
Under the section "Future potential of biocomputers" a citation is requested for the following sentence:

"Evidence of the true potential of the computing capabilities of biocomputers exists in the most powerful, complex computational machine known to currently exist: the biocomputer that is the human brain.[citation needed]"

While this sentence is a bit grandiose in its verbage, there can be no dispute; the human brain is in fact the most powerful biological computing machine currently known to mankind. A citation is not needed, this statement qualifies as common knowlege. A citation would be necessary if the author argued that the most powerful biological computing machine was something other than the human brain. — Preceding unsigned comment added by EthoScien (talk • contribs) 13:20, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

'Computing' using more complex structures than DNA/Proteins
Potential use of Nerve Cells - use of their existing structure and functions (manipulation of their natural functions and operation).

DNA and Protein mechanisms may be possible to exploit, but require alot of supporting mechanisms which also have to be contrived to make them practical.

Nerve Cells would have much useful functionality, but possibly other cells (E Coli, etc) might add needed structure to sustain the working computational logic components. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.36.138.207 (talk) 04:15, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Addition to the Notable Advancements section
From [|Physarum polycephalum],
 * "The organism's reaction to its environment has also been used in a USB sensor and to control a robot."
 * "In a book and several preprints that have not been scientifically peer reviewed, it has been claimed that because plasmodia appear to react in a consistent way to stimuli, they are the "ideal substrate for future and emerging bio-computing devices". For example,


 * It has been reported that plasmodia can be made to form logic gates. In particular, plasmodia placed at entrances to special geometrically shaped mazes would emerge at exits of the maze that were consistent with truth tables for certain primitive logic connectives. However, in the preprint, when these primitive gates were connected to form higher logic functions, the plasmodium ceased to produce results consistent with the expected truth tables. Consequently, the composed gates were validated instead using a simulation speculated to model the streaming processes within a plasmodium.
 * An outline has been presented showing how it may be possible to precisely point, steer and cleave plasmodium using light and food sources.
 * Physarum has been proposed as candidate for the BioNetwork paradigm, i.e., a communication network paradigm in which the traditional network nodes are replaced by living organisms, by proving that a Physarum BioNetwork can solve the Steiner tree problem with an exponential convergence rate toward the optimal solution." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Crossark (talk • contribs) 17:43, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

History.
Should not a section of "History" be made? The origin of these ideas can be traced back fifty years. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.255.121.252 (talk) 23:26, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Reference 13 - outdated?
There is a link to QUT as an institution funding research into biological computing, but the reference itself is generic funding from QUT (and currently, from what I can see, does NOT include examples of biological computing (in the context described within the article)) Highendcompute (talk) 11:13, 20 November 2023 (UTC)