CULTURE AND RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURE 359
structures of key proteins; understanding the changes in protein structure related to interaction with
molecules such as DNA, metals, and organic ligands; visualization of multiprotein complexes that are
essential to understand DNA repair and bioremediation; prediction of protein structure and function
from sequence information, and modeling of the molecular complexes formed by protein-protein or
protein-nucleic acid interactions.
10.2.5.2.4 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency With a reputation for engaging in “high-risk,
high-return” research, DARPA has been a key player in the development of applications that utilize
biomolecules as information processing, sensing, or structural components in anticipation of reaching
the limits of Moore’s law. This research area, largely supported under DARPA’s biocomputation pro-
gram,^61 was described in Section 8.4. Managed out of DARPA’s Information Processing Technology
Office (IPTO), the biocomputation program has also supported the BioSPICE program, a computational
framework with analytical and modeling tools that can be used to predict and control cellular processes
(described in Chapter 5 (Box 5.7)). Finally, the biocomputation program has supported work in syn-
thetic biology (i.e., the design and fabrication of biological components and systems that do not already
exist in the natural world) as well as the redesign and fabrication of existing biological systems (de-
scribed in Section 8.4.2.2).
IPTO also supports a number of programs that seek to develop information technology that embod-
ies certain biological characteristics.^62 These programs have included the following:
- Software for distributed robotics, to develop and demonstrate techniques to safely control, coordi-
nate, and manage large systems of autonomous software agents. A key problem is to determine effec-
tive strategies for achieving the benefits of agent-based systems, while ensuring that self-organizing
agent systems will maintain acceptable performance and security protections. - Mobile autonomous robot software, to develop the software technologies needed for controlling the
autonomous operation of singly autonomous, mobile robots in partially known, changing, and unpre-
dictable environments. In this program, ideas from robot learning and control are extended, including
soft computing, robot shaping, and imitation. - Taskable agent software kit, to codify agent design methodology as a suite of control and decision
mechanisms, to devise metrics that characterize the conditions and domain features that indicate appro-
priate design solutions, and to explain and formalize the notion of emergent behavior. - Self-regenerative systems, to develop core technologies necessary for making computational sys-
tems able to continue operation in the face of attacks, damage, or errors. Specific avenues of investiga-
tion include biological metaphors of diversity, such as mechanisms to automatically generate a large
number of different implementations of a given function that most of them will not share a given flaw;
immune systems; and human cognitive models. - Biologically inspired cognitive architectures, to codify a set of theories, design principles, and archi-
tectures of human cognition that are specifically grounded in psychology and neurobiology. Although
implementation of such models on computers is beyond the scope of the current project, it is a natural
extension once sufficiently complete models can be created.
DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO) supports a variety of programs that connect biology to
computing in the broad sense in which this report uses the term. These programs have included the
following:
(^61) See http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/programs/biocomp/index.htm.
(^62) See http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/Programs/programs.htm.