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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.
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?
A transistor is a computer. It just computes exactly one function on exactly one set of inputs. It's a simple finite state machine.