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Computing Inside a Living Cell
First time accepted submitter Rozanne writes "The new issue of Stanford Medicine magazine has a story on Stanford professor Drew Endy's creation of microscopic computers out of biological components for use inside living cells. His work is a mash-up of molecular biology and computer engineering: Instead of a computer made of silicon, metal and plastic, it's a computer made of DNA, RNA and enzymes. Endy says biologists are typically confounded at first when he explains how the computers work and how they could be used."
Based on not reading the article, is that probably there is not really an analogy with computing figured out in detail. Yet.
For all his talk, Drew Endy hasn't actually pushed the synthetic biology field forward, and it was always questionable whether his vision of "standardized biological parts" would be the best way to engineer biology. His analogies to computer engineering are mostly false, as biology operates according to physical and chemical rules. Not Ohm's Law. Not digital logic. You can engineer biology to mimic digital logic, but it's truly analog governed by biomolecular interactions and stochastic dynamical processes.
There are other people in the Synthetic Biology field who are doing much more innovative and interesting work.
Go read stories about them.
Mutation is the result of DNA change. Often from external sources such as radiation or chemicals. The change could be good, bad, or nothing readily noticeable. So that said, how can you rely on the results of a biological computer that's prone to mutation and thus corrupting the results?
Life is not for the lazy.
Now we can finally start betting on sperm races. All you need to do is the following:
1. Put a tiny bit of compute power in each sperm cell that identifies the sperm.
2. Proceed to give odds, take bets
3. Fuck
4. Profit! After the egg has been fertilised you can use the tracking chip in the sperm to see which one "won".
Monstar L
We, as human being built by tons of living cells, are more advanced computer. Now we want to evolve backward to dumb computer?
but can it mine bitcoins?!
I'd like to see the first virus attack it. Will it be biological, AI, or as I suspect, both, with a good mix of probablistic retries of infection,
until when beats it? Will the attack vector be the result of generational learning? Hmm. Things are looking creepy, I tell ya...
...to Cell processors.
About 15 or 20 years ago, there was a lot of biological computing going on where they would attempt to use bacteria to solve NP-hard problems and also crack encryption in n time (basically by replicating the bacteria and getting n^3 or o^n bacteria reproducing and breaking a code. They used large vats of bacteria instead of acres of cores. And now this. Its either 2013, or 1993, or 2033.
where do you plug in the keyboard? :)
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With electronic signal amplification, a very small change in electrical flow is sufficient to open and close gates that control massive rivers of electrons. “The biological transistor, what we call a ‘transcriptor,’ does the same thing.
He has formally donated the transcriptor and biological logic gates to the public domain via the BioBrick Public Agreement. That means anyone is free to use them. A similar declaration for the biological Internet is in process.
The only piece of biocomputer technology Stanford and Endy have patented is the biological digital memory.
“Some other groups have patented technologies claiming to accomplish a similar goal,” explains Endy. “If we have a patent, we can assure the technology is free and available to all simply by not pursuing our patent rights. But if we don’t have a patent, someone else could claim the technology and restrict its use.”
finally someone that invents a great technology and understands that patents stifle innovation!
bold tag! :)
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the fact that you can mentally process digital logic means that you are digital computer
Wish I had mod points...
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I suspect the first will be an boot virus...
I can smell it coming....
"Intel Inside" get's a whole new meaning!
This sounds like the scenario to the novel Blood Music by Greg Bear.
I am a Statistician. One false move and you are a Statistic
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388 | H. Pylori sub mod 3 | E. Coli sub mod 6 | food sense | chili dog consumption detected | produce explosive diarrhea