Computer made of DNA works out prime factors of 6 and 15

Filling a test tube with molecules made from folded DNA can work as a simple computer. The approach has been used to split two numbers into prime factors.

Conventional computers work by passing electricity through tiny on-off switches to perform simple calculations. However, the new computer relies on the way that differently shaped DNA molecules combine.

Yinan Zhang at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China and his colleagues used a process called DNA origami, where chemicals contort, intertwine and stick together long strands of …