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Biological Computer Created at Stanford
sciencehabit writes "For the first time, synthetic biologists have created a genetic device that mimics one of the widgets on which all of modern electronics is based, the three-terminal transistor. Like standard electronic transistors, the new biological transistor is expected to work in many different biological circuit designs. This should make it easier for scientists to program cells to do everything from monitor pollutants and the progression of disease to turning on the output of medicines and biofuels."
We have synthetic biologists now?!?! What happened to the real ones?
Reminds me of a quote.. "Synthetic scotch and synthetic commanders..." - Scotty
Hahahhaha funny.
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
My wife and I have created 4 of those.
it is a war between building a working biological computer and getting the quantum computers to add 2+2 correctly 100% of the time! who will win? im betting on quantum computers. (especially since i would love to see an ansible sometime in my life)
The Stanford team then showed that they could line up multiple transcriptors to carry out logical functions, creating standard logical circuits called AND gates, OR gates, XOR gates, and so on, which combine signals according to certain rules. (A computer's processor is a vast assemblage of such gates.) They also showed that their novel biological circuit designs were adept at producing signals with large amplification and that they could be used to up the expression of a variety of genes, such as the production of fluorescent signals that made it simple to detect cells that were carrying out their programming.
I wonder exactly how they "assemble" the circuit and keep the components from diffusing or floating away, thus diassembling the circuit. What keeps the "circuit" of DNA strands in place?
You're wrong. A small computer can be assembled from a few hundred vacuum tubes. I designed a CPU when I was in high school, on paper, turing complete. 4 bits, 16 instructions. Not a lot went into that.
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A transistor is a computer. It just computes exactly one function on exactly one set of inputs. It's a simple finite state machine.
Perhaps the headline should have said "logic gates" instead of "computer". It didn't say "Core i7" either, though. Babbage's machine was a computer. Programing graphics processors with punch cards dates to the early 1800s, so "computer" doesn't imply a modern desktop.
I suspect you'd agree that any processor capable of running Windows is a computer. Therefore, any machine that can run a hypervisor, which in turn runs Windows, is a computer. You probably know where I'm headed - Turing machines. Any Turing machine can emulate a Core processor, and is therefore a computer. Wolfram's Turing machine requires only a few gates, so these researchers can probably build a biological Wolfram Turing computer today.
Well then their definition is wrong. An abacus is a literal computation device, a computer.
Good-bye
If someone is going to argue that something is untrue, and there is an understood interpretation of words that makes it true, they are being obstinate. Such semantics should only be argued when someone is holding 2 mutually exclusive definitions at once.
So, is this going to bring a new meaning to the term "computer virus"? As in an actual biological virus might affect the hardware.
I think it is more interesting that we have created synthetic biologists (as per the summary).
" Transistors are analog devices with continuously infinite number of states."
You could have just said you don't know how a transistor works. I mean, sure that sentence conveyed the same information, but is seems like a round about way to show off your ignorance.
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