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."

Comments

A name

[HP LoveJet]

Has anyone thought about calling this thing a biode?

Interesting technology

[Ravenscall]

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.

Not really computation

[weaver]

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

Bionic chips.

[Matt2000]

"...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

Some thoughts...

[British]

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.

Read the release, heading is misleading

[be-fan]

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.

Re:At Last!

[Eruantalon]

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

Can I get a mute button soon?

[MicroBerto]

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

This seems familiar

[benwb]

Mating Human Cells With Circuitry

Micro-Electroporation: Improving the efficiency and Understanding of Electrical Permeabilization of Cells

Refining an old technique

[Jello7]

The "bionic chip" is basically improving on an older technique commonly used in molecular biology called electroporation. Basically, a cell is shocked with electricity and pores open up in the cell membrane. This is usually done to allow large biomolecules to enter the cell, such as engineered DNA. The problem with this approach is that it is usually done quite crudely with not much fine-grain control. This new chip gives us this computerized fine control.

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.

Let's home it's embeded OS is stable.

[kwsNI]

Just think, if the chip has Windows installed as the embedded OS, we'd be in trouble. I'd hate for a critical bio-organ to have a fatal exception in the middle of doing something.

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

Been there, seen that

[uebernewby]

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.