MIT Engineers Develop Living Circuit Board from Bacteria

11:16 PM ETDeveloping

Technology Desk

In Short: MIT researchers have engineered bacteria to act as transistors, creating living circuit boards that can be printed on growth material in a Petri dish.

MIT engineers have created a living circuit board using bacteria, demonstrating that these microorganisms can function as transistors to perform various logic operations, according to reports from SciTechDaily.

The researchers showed that a single bacterial transistor could carry out multiple logic operations, such as 'multi-input,' 'or,' and 'imply' gates, depending on its position in the circuit, as detailed in the study.

By engineering bacteria to regulate the movement of signaling molecules, the MIT team has developed a flexible toolkit that can be arranged into different circuit designs, potentially leading to the creation of biological circuits on plant leaves or roots to process environmental information.

Ultimately, the researchers aim to use these biological circuits to help plants respond to environmental changes, such as drought or pest attacks, by processing and acting on incoming signals within the circuit.

What's still developing

They engineered two forms of the bacterial transistor, both controlled by a molecule called OC-6.
MIT researchers have engineered bacteria to behave like transistors, making it possible to build living “circuit boards” that can be printed onto growth material in a Petri dish.
In their new study, the researchers used the system to build circuits capable of combining two or three inputs, as well as directing an incoming signal to a selected destination within the circuit.
Those circuits could process information about changing environmental conditions, including drought or attacks by pests, and then help trigger an appropriate response.
Synthetic biology circuits are usually built by engineering cells to produce proteins and transcription factors that interact in specific ways.

Sources

SciTechDailylink