Biological Computation

230    ◾    Biological Computation

(A joule is a physical unit of energy equaling roughly the amount

of energy required to li a 1 kilogram object 10 centimeters o the

Earth’s surface.)

4. Flexibility: e biggest problem is that the use of molecular algo-

rithms requires a radically dierent design of the algorithm for each

problem (in terms of, e.g., representation, logical operations, and labo-

ratory procedures) and that in each case the algorithm needs to be cre-

ated from very basic molecular operations. Contrast this with solving

problems using digital computers where modern high-level program-

ming languages and soware design tools enable solving computa-

tional tasks in fairly straightforward ways (at least most of the time).

5.2.2