biocomputers tagged posts

Transforming bacterial cells into living artificial neural circuits; applications include biomanufacturing and therapeutics. Bringing together concepts from electrical engineering and bioengineering tools, Technion and MIT scientists collaborated to produce cells engineered to compute sophisticated functions – “biocomputers” of sorts. Graduate students and researchers from Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Professor Ramez Daniel’s Laboratory for Synthetic Biology & Bioelectronics worked together with Professor Ron Weiss from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to create genetic “devices” designed to perform computations like artificial neural circuits...

Researchers have integrated two CRISPR-Cas9-based core processors into human cells. This represents a huge step towards creating powerful biocomputers. Controlling gene expression through gene switches based on a model borrowed from the digital world has long been one of the primary objectives of synthetic biology. The digital technique uses what are known as logic gates to process input signals, creating circuits where, for example, output signal C is produced only when input signals A and B are simultaneously present.

To date, biotechnologists had attempted to build such digital circuits with the help of protein gene switches i...