Source : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

DNA computing
     
         The use of DNA molecules to encode
        computational problems.  Standard operations of molecular
        biology can then be used to solve some {NP-hard} {search
        problems} in parallel using a very large number of molecules.
        The exponential scaling of NP-hard problems still remains, so
        this method will require a huge amount of DNA to solve large
        problems.
     
        [L. M. Adleman, "Molecular Computation of Solutions to
        Combinatorial Problems", Science 266:1021-1024, 1994].
     
        (1997-02-11)