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UC Berkeley Announces First "Bionic Chip"
ebibe writes, "Researchers at UC Berkeley will announce successfully creating the 'bionic chip.' Part living tissue, part machine, this chip is the first in which a biological cell is part of the actual electronic circuitry. The chip, which took three years to build using silicon microfabrication technology, has a wide range of potential uses, including new ways to treat genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis or diabetes, safer methods to test new pharmaceuticals for side effects and more complex bionic electronic circuitry. View the entire press release here."
For six million dollars it had better run Linux ;)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Patents only last 20 years (currently, in the US). I doubt that anyone is going to die in the next 20 years due to the technology being patented, that would otherwise have been saved.
I'm unhappy about the patent system, but my reason is primarilly that they issue too many patents on obvious stuff. I haven't seen the patent application for this, and biochemistry is not my field, so I have no way to judge whether this stuff is obvious or not.
My other gripe is that the patent office grants patents on genetic sequences that exist in nature. To my way of thinking, those don't constitute "inventions".
Oh darn! my living cell microchip is dead..
"Hey there sir, would you care come over here and bend, I need a tiny prostrate cell if you dont mind"
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Has anyone thought about calling this thing a biode?
spawn_of_yog_sothoth
This is an interesting technology, and I wionder about the other uses beyond genetic engineering. What with the new work they are doing with stem cells to combat diabetes (http://www.cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/02/28/health.stemc ells.reut/index.html) such ' smart cells' if you will, could be genetically altered to introduce all manners of items int a subject. Think of a genetically altered cell made to produce insulin with the chip controlling the flow based on blood sugar for diabetics. Another thing to watch though is how the immune system reacts to these items.
You say you want a revolution....
From what the guy you replied to describes, that would be a zener diode.
The title only has four letters: G, A, T and C
... which just happen to be the initials of the four nitrogen bases which make up DNA. Is it possible that I was the only one who noticed that? Naah.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
They STILL haven't worked out that bug that made Lee Majors (and Farrah) sound like a turbine
everytime they ran and stuff.
According to the press release, the cell is not a computational unit, but rather the subject of the chip. The chip allows the researcher to 'open' the cell membrane on command.
The possibilities of drug testing, genetic research, and just plain science are impressive. I wonder if the knowledge of how specific voltages open cell membranes could be used in nano tech work. Imagine a 'bionic' chip used to open cell membranes to allow the nanites to enter harmlessly.
To take it a bit further, imagine larger nanites that open cells in situ allowing smaller nanites to slip in to do their work (or proteins or some such). Very cool.
I expect it'll be a bit for any real applications come out of this, however.
Take care,
Mike
"...researchers announced that the new sophisticated chips could be on the market as early as next year and would have a wider range of more powerful flavours. The Sour cream and onion variety will be released at 9x its original flavour, while BBQ should be over 11x. Researchers say that the flavour multiple should increase rapidly as they move to a 0.1 mm ruffle process.
Hostess' law states that flavour will double every 18 months while number of chips in a bag will half. Researchers have been worried lately that they may have been reaching the physical limits of flavour packing, but these newly announced bionic technologies should allow for further improvements."
Hotnutz.com - Funny
There's so many dirty glasses, plates, bottles, and other assorted trash around my (non-covered) box that there's gotta be all sorts of microbes growing inside my box...and given the fast evolutionary cycle of microorganisms, I'm sure there's at least a few that have learned to integrate with my machine. At least it gives me something to blame wierd shit on.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
Is it just me or is this announcement less than overwhelming from a clinical science perspective?
Aside from basic science research, I can see very little application for this kind of device. Introducing molecules into cells is indeed a problem at times and a specific gate would indeed be helpful. However, simply using an electrode to open voltage gated protein transporters/pores does little to help because there are literally hundreds of different pores that would be affected by such a whole-cell transient voltage clamp. There are probably applications for measuring cell reaction in response to hyper/de-polarization. However...
Gene therapy. I don't see how this is applicable. The cell transformation would have to take place in vitro - the number of diseases in which this is helpful are quite limited. In addition, the current ability to process one cell at a time seriously limits the utility of this device in most diseases where large cell populations need conversion for clinical efficacy. Someone mentioned stem cell conversion: this would (more than likely) help in converting these cells. However, it seems that successful reimplantation requires more than would be feasible with such a specific device. I suppose that it could be made into a huge grid for mass conversions, but I would be interested to know how they would expect to test conversion in such a case.
In any event, I suppose this is a first. However, as far as gene therapy goes, I feel that the current vectors (retroviruses, AAV, lipids, etc.) hold more promise due to the built-in cellular specificity possible, their built-in capacity to (often) incorporate into the genome, and the sheer numbers of gene conversion events possible. Not to mention the size and possible immune issues restricting this device's in vivo use.
Invicta{HOG}
Hey I can't wait until i can instal linu..... naw, too easy.
Oh great, this is the beginnings of the bor.... nope, too geeky.
Hey I could turn myself into a human Beowu.... nahh, too abstract.
What would happen if a vir..... uh uh, too obscure.
What would happen if this ran Windo..... ah screw it.
The heading (actually the title given to it by the university) is a little misleading. What we have here is not biological computing devices, for example like the ones that use a slugs brain cell to compute, but a new way to get at the cell. It will probably be more usefull to genetic engineering than anything else. (It says the cell opens and closes in a millisecond, which is an aweful long time.) That out of the way, I think this is really what is needed to take genetic engineering to the next level. By having a "door" as the article put it, into the cell, genetic engineering can take place much more easily. Although this current technology of integrating the cell into a chip will be great for experiments, this technoglogy can also be taken to the point where cells can be operated on directly, perhaps with some sort of probe. This does, however, raise again the ugly question of ethics and science. Anybody see the movie Gattica? (An awesome movie by the way) If something goes wrong with this technology (ie corperations get a hold of it before educational institutions) then Gattica might not seem so much like science fiction.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Yeah, I read that after posting. Guess I'll have to read first from now on...
Anyways, so since it seems that this will be more beneficial to genetic engineering than anything else, I wonder if we should be worried about this. It'll probably be used to research diseases, cell functions, genetics & genetic defaults. Still, I can see problems with religious groups, crazies trying to engineer new diseases to wipe us off the face of the earth, and (even less likely) secret government studies trying to biologically control us all. But seriously, I'm sure there'll be some well-founded moral objections to the technology. Besides, research in human cloning became illegal in the USA soon after Dolly, why shoule we expect this technology to stay legal? All it needs is some lab somewhere in the world to start making genetic changes, and religious/moral groups will be all over the government to make this illegal as well.
Eruantalon
Eruantalon
The Annals of Middle-earth
What kind of civilization do we have that we celebrate a poor living cell being forced to be a gateway for electrical current. How do we know that these cells don't long to be free, to be able to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of Amoeba happiness?
I am appalled. Appalled! We must storm the lab, and free these poor nuclei from the savage brutality of bondage.
Who's with me? Light your torches, and follow me! FOLLOW ME!!
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It has been my goal to get a mute button for my ears, think this will help? How great would it be when there are idiots blabbin and i don't wanna hear it, to just hit a little button behind your ear and have dead SILENCE? I can't wait.. :)
Mike Roberto
- roberto@apk.net
-- AOL IM: MicroBerto
Berto
Micro-Electroporation: Improving the efficiency and Understanding of Electrical Permeabilization of Cells
As stated elsewhere, this isn't really "bionic" computing at all - just a step ahead in genetic engineering and peering deeper into the cell. There've been discussions and research into other areas of biological computing that come much closer to what we might call "bionic," such as using strands of DNA or protiens. However, these have thus far been limited to specific problems, such as computing the shortest route between two cities or similar problems.
The challenge (imho) to biological computing, if it's ever to be widely useful, is to generalize it. Is DNA Turing complete? = )
However, I am definitely for more experimentation and research in bionics. The scary part is Pentagon involvement. Or any military institute, for that matter. I would not be at all suprised to see further research in bionics declared "secret" by the State Dept., simply so they can get direct military applications from any future advancements, and deny information to the "Red Menace". Let's all hope that it doesn't happen this way.
In the mean time, sign me up for Wired Reflexes (L2), Datajack and Skillwires (L1)...
-- Count Spatula: The Culinary Vampire "...because my cooking sucks."
The way I see it, the "bionic chip" technology will be useful mainly in gene therapy, not as much in genetic engineering (there are already easy enough ways to engineer genes). For a patient with a genetic disorder, like cystic fibrosis for example, a sample of lung tissue cells could be taken and a working copy of the CFTR chloride channel protein gene could be introduced. The cells would hopefully start producing proper protein and would then be re-introduced to the lung, where it would hopefully have a positive effect.
Oh shit, my heart has stopped responding. It may be busy waiting for the End Task Dialog box to come up. Press any key to wait or Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart.
kwsNI
What, me worry?
I believe a back-to-back pair of diodes (one forward- and one reverse-biased, wrt the first one) have the property of not conducting current until a threshold voltage is reached. and once reached, current flows in both directions.
so I think its not accurate to call a cell a 'diode'.
maybe you could call it a pair of diodes ;-)
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
but my main point was that there is on unidirectionality in cells; how could there be? why would there be?
the idea is that if you put enough current thru it, the walls will open up. and once open, you can push/pull stuff thru the holes in the walls.
maybe they should call it a sesame device, since when you put enough force thru it, the walls open up. ;-)
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Fact: this same story was posted here on 26/02 (`Mating human cells with circuitry).
It was rightly posted here. It's an interesting topic.
Then if it's posted here AGAIN the message that points out it was posted before is considered to be flamebait?
I understand the need for moderation, but this is fucked. Betcha it was the guy who posted the story who moderated the original comment down.
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
Yup, it's inspiring news to be sure. Too bad the same story was also posted here on Slashdot on feb. 26 (Mating human cells with circuitry).
Goes to show story submissions should be moderated as well: -1 redundant.
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/