The number of tasks they could undertake is limited only by evolution and human ingenuity.
The circuit is designed to act as the controller in synthetic bacteria that monitor and modify their environment
By force of habit we tend to assume computers are made of silicon, but there is actually no necessary connection between the machine and the material. All that an engineer needs to do to make a computer is to find a way to build logic gates — the elementary building blocks of digital computers — in whatever material is handy.
So logic gates could theoretically be made of pipes of water, channels for billiard balls or even mazes for soldier crabs.
By comparison Tae Seok Moon’s ambition, which is to build logic gates out of genes, seems eminently practical. As a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Christopher Voigt, PhD, a synthetic biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he recently made the largest gene (or genetic) circuit yet reported.
Moon, PhD, now an assistant professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis is the lead author of an article describing the project in the Oct. 7 issue of Nature. Voigt is the senior author.
The tiny circuits constructed from these gene gates and others like them may one day be components of engineered cells that will monitor and respond to their environments.
The number of tasks they could undertake is limited only by evolution and human ingenuity. Janitor bacteria might clean up pollutants, chemical-engineer bacteria pump out biofuels and miniature infection-control bacteria might bustle about killing pathogens.
via Washington University in St. Louis – Diana Lutz
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