MIT Engineers Bacteria to Run Logic Circuits, Completing Calculations in 8 Hours
Updated
Updated · Interesting Engineering · Aug 18
MIT Engineers Bacteria to Run Logic Circuits, Completing Calculations in 8 Hours
3 articles · Updated · Interesting Engineering · Aug 18
Summary
MIT researchers engineered Pantoea agglomerans into transistor-like switches and linked them into living circuits that performed addition, OR, implication and demultiplexing functions.
24 bacterial colonies printed about 5 millimeters apart on agar passed chemical signals between strains, with relay cells translating molecules so separate colonies could act as modular circuit components.
The design spreads computation across multiple cells instead of cramming many functions into one, aiming to avoid protein-production overload and interference that limit conventional synthetic biology.
An 8-hour calculation is far slower than electronics, but the team says that timescale fits plant biology and could support root or leaf sensors that detect drought, pests or disease and trigger responses such as fungicide production.
The Nature Chemical Biology study, partly funded by DARPA and IARPA, points toward computation embedded directly in living systems rather than routed through conventional electronics.