Gabriele Gramelsberger

DNA is seen as a natural form of infor­mation storage, and cells are interpreted as living programs that have been suc­cessfully replicating code for ages. Both DNA and cells are increasingly used as wetware computers — computers made of organic material. A chronological, retrospective look at the developments that have lead to today’s wetware computers takes us from Alfred James Lotka’s ›Elements of Physical Biology‹ (1925) to Claude Shannon’s ›Algebra for Theoretical Genetic‹ (1940), George M. Church’s et al. ›DNA­Storage‹ (2012), and Jerome Bonnet’s et al. ›Transcrip­tor‹ which was developed in 2013 and functions as the genetic equivalent to an electronic transistor. These burgeon­ing developments are not devised to replace conventional in­-silico comput­ing but to create living computers inside animals and humans detecting diseases and toxic threats.