Stanford scientists created a computer inside a living cell

In the XIX century, Charles Babbage, developing the project of his computer, relied on mechanical elements. ENIAK, the first modern versatile computer, created in the mid-40s, was based on the features of vacuum tubes. Today computers use transistors based on semiconductor elements for carrying out logical operations.



The team of bioengineers at Stanford University, in turn, created a logical element from genetic material, which was called the biological transistor or transcriptor. They reported about it in the Science magazine on March 28 of this year.



In the publication, the researchers described a universal system of genetic transistors inside a functioning cell, which can be turned on or off under certain conditions. The authors of the study express the hope that, over time, such groups of transistors can become microscopic live computers.

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Computers of this kind can perform various tasks: determine the presence of a toxin, count the number of divisions of a cancer cell, or provide detailed and accurate information about the effect of the drug on any type of cells. For example, to avoid uncontrolled division of cancer cells, you can program a computer inside the cell to die when a certain threshold number of divisions is reached.



Drew Andy (in the photo) hopes that in the future it will be possible to place miniature computers in any living cell, but notices that there is no question of replacing silicon microelectronics. It is not expected to replace the silicon filling of phones or laptops with live computers, but computers will work where silicon could never.



The team demonstrated the work of biocomputers using the example of E. Coli bacteria, which is very typical for genetic studies. "Transcripts" use special enzymes to control the flow of RNA polymerase along DNA strands, just as millions of silicon transistors in computers control the current of electrons. The choice of transcriptome enzymes is a time consuming and important task, since they must be workable both in bacteria and in fungi and animal cells.



Like conventional silicon transistors, transcripts allow a small current to control the behavior of a larger one. A small change in enzyme activity (transcriptor gate) will lead to a large change in the associated genes (channel). Combining transcripts, the researchers created a complete set of elements of Boolean logic — the biological equivalents of AND, AND-NOT, OR, exclusive OR, and exclusive non-OR. With a set of such elements, a biological computer can perform calculations inside the cell.



To carry out calculations in the cell, however, a biological data storage device is required, and experiments on coding information in genetic material have already been carried out . One should not expect the rapid appearance of productive biological computers, but it is possible that, for example, a new type of medicine will be distributed. In the hope of developing a biological computing technology, researchers at Stanford have transferred the design of (bio) logical elements to the public domain.







Based on the websites of ExtremeTech and the Stanford School of Medicine .