I2CELL

Cells as computers: Looking upon cells with an information processing perspective... The idea that living systems could be understood and described as information-processing systems has been around even before the first computers were built. From Alan Turing's paper in 1936 to Erwin Schrödinger's work in 1944 and John von Neumann in 1948, many scientists pondered about information storage and the possible existence of a logical processor within living cells. The discovery in 1953 of the double-helical structure of DNA provided the material basis for these intuitions as it finally revealed how cells store inheritable information in a ‘digital' format. The recent success of genome transplantation experiment into recipient host cells - akin to transferring software to another computer - further strengthened the hypothesis that living cells can be regarded as Turing Machines, as was recalled by Sydney Brenner.