Engineered bacteria that can function as transistors in an electronic circuit have been developed by MIT researchers.
In electrical circuits, transistors function as switches that can turn the current on or off. In the biological circuits created by the researchers, bacterial switches control the flow of small molecules, which send signals to downstream circuit components.
The team said that the technology allows for the creation of living “circuit boards” that can be printed onto a growth medium in a Petri dish.
They designed two different types of bacterial transistor, along with three bacterial strains that relay information between them. Using these building blocks, the team were able to design nearly any type of circuit, including circuits with two or three inputs that can be directed to specific locations within the circuit.
“We’ve built some initial computer architecture components that are commonly used, but any operation can be built with these five strains,” said Hamid Doosthosseini...