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)