A Single Cell Hints at a Solution to the Biggest Problem in Computer Science

One of the oldest problems in computer science was just solved by a single cell. A group of researchers from Tokyo's Keio University set out to use an amoeba to solve the Traveling Salesman Problem, a famous problem in computer science. The problem works like this: imagine you're a traveling salesman flying from city to city selling your wares. You're concerned about maximizing your efficiency to make as much money as possible, so you want to find the shortest path that will let you hit every city on your route. There's no simple mathematical formula to find the most efficient route for our salesman.