Chemlambda for the people
(no js version)

We can program a computer to do anything.

What if we had the same power over the molecules of our bodies?

Let's imagine how this could change our lives.

(original js version)

"still he'd see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void"

William Gibson, Neuromancer

"like making lists, just, fold up inside themselves. Come out the other way around. Crazy things."

Pseudo -- William Gibson

https://aphyr.com/posts/340-reversing-the-technical-interview#comment-2763

Digital-to-biological-converter

source: Digital-to-biological converter for on-demand production of biologics, Kent S Boles, Krishna Kannan, John Gill, Martina Felderman, Heather Gouvis, Bolyn Hubby, Kurt I Kamrud, J Craig Venter and Daniel G Gibson, Nature 2017,doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3859

digital chemistry

to biological chemistry

and back

Step 1. Build a digital chemistry which we can program.

In a digital chemistry data and programs are all graph like structures, digital molecules which fold up inside themselves and come out the other way around only they do it randomly, like in real chemistry.

Step 2. Use Nature to simulate this digital chemistry.

Find a digital-to-biological dictionary from the elementary bricks of the digital chemistry to real biomolecular bricks.

Step 3. Build digital-to-biological converters and biological-to-digital sensors.

chemlambda

to biological chemistry

and back

Dodecahedron multiplication

source: collection no. 97

(live simulation)

Virus structure duplication

source: collection no. 211

(live simulation)

Virus structure with Turing Machines, builts itself

source: collection no. 204

(live simulation)

Netflix flavored meatballs for your doggie!

[the internet can be your pet]

source: CRISPR-Cas encoding of a digital movie into the genomes of a population of living bacteria. Seth L. Shipman, Jeff Nivala, Jeffrey D. Macklis & George M. Church, Nature Letter, 2017, doi.org/10.1038/nature23017

digital chemistry

to biological chemistry?

and back

Notes:

1. See my 2015 computational notebook Molecular computers, as well as the newer Molecular computers which are based on graph rewriting systems like chemlambda, chemSKI or Interaction Combinators

. For more about the chemlambda project read about it's history in arXiv:2007.10288.

2. The first version of this page is this, which was to be used as slides for an invited TEDGLOBAL 2017 talk with a weird story.

3. I was recently notified about the much earlier project Universally Programmable Intelligent Matter (UPIM) by Bruce J. Maclennan. UPIM takes inspiration from the SKI combinators.

4. In UPIM report 10, section 2.1 they write, though: "we found little need in molecular computing for such potentially nonterminating programs". The main novelty of the chemlambda project is the study of graph quines, see an archive of the first experiments Graph quines in chemlambda. Experiments with chemlambda-gui

and the newer Alife properties of directed interaction combinators vs. chemlambda. Therefore I am, on one side, relieved that I was not the first to think about applications of computer science graph rewriting into real chemistry, and on the other side happy that there is some novelty in the chemlambda proposal, in the sense that biological life may be one day understood as a random, asemantical, local graph rewriting process.

Continue to chemlambda projects page