Universal collision-based computing by nanobots in living animals

Computers augment our ability to perceive and control reality. However some of reality’s aspects, such as molecules in living organisms, have been impossible to automate. Here I describe a strategy that addresses this challenge. We programmed various types of collisions between DNA origami nanoscale robots in response to biological cues. These collisions generate logical outputs, which are relayed to the activation of a therapeutic molecule. As a proof of principle we created various architectures of this system, emulating the logical operators AND, OR, XOR, NAND, NOT and CNOT, as well as a 1-bit adder. Following an ex-vivo prototyping phase, these nanobot-based architectures were successfully employed in living insects to control a therapeutic molecule targeting their cells. This work demonstrates the practicality of collision-based computing in controlling therapeutic molecules in-vivo, and could lead to a paradigm shift in the way drugs are conceived and ultimately used.