IEEE Spectrum September 25, 2018
Scientists have struggled to navigate the technology gap between microelectronics and the biological world. By engineering cells with synthetic biology components, a team of researchers in the US (University of Maryland, University of Nebraska, Army Research Laboratory) has experimentally demonstrated a proof-of-concept device enabling robust and reliable information exchanges between electrical and biological (molecular) domains. They are working to develop a novel biological memory device that can be written to and read from via either biological and/or electronic means. Such a device would function like a thumb drive or SD card, using molecular signals to store key information, and would require almost no energy. The hope is that such a system could seek out and destroy a bacterial pathogen by recognizing its secreted signaling molecules and synthesizing a pathogen-specific toxin… read more.
IEEE Spectrum