Yeast with logic valves

An analog of an electronic circuit is built in a living cell

Sergey Syrov, XX2 century, based on the materials of Lab Manager: Scientists Borrow from Electronics to Build Circuits in Living Cells

Living cells constantly process information – they track changes in the world around them and react to them. It took billions of years of evolution to develop information processing methods at the cellular level. The microchips created by people, on which computers work, transform information into unambiguously understood zeros and ones for processing information. It's not like that in cells. DNA, proteins, fats and sugars work in a complex way.

But scientists want to use the cell's ability to be a "living computer" that will help create new therapies, efficiently produce biofuels or other useful organic substances, and cannot wait for evolution to create the desired cellular system.

In an article published on May 25 in the journal Nature Communications, a scientific group from the University of Washington demonstrated a new method of digital information processing in a living cell – an analogue of logic elements (so-called gates) used in electrical circuits. This is a set of synthetic genes that function in cells as a logic element OR-NOT (Eng. NOR gate), widely used in electronics. This is an element that has two inputs and outputs a positive signal if both input values are negative. Using only this element (known as the "Pierce arrow"), you can build all the other elements to perform logical operations.

Yeast cells were used as a "mounting table" to create a logical element based on DNA.

"Although the implementation of simple programs in a cell will never be able to compete with silicon in speed and accuracy of calculations, genetic programs can interact with the cell environment directly," says Eric Klavins, senior author of the publication, Professor of electrical Engineering at the University of Washington. "For example, reprogrammed patient cells can perform certain therapeutic actions in the most important tissues."

Each logical element OR-NOT in a cell consists of a gene with three programmed DNA sections – two as inputs and one output. The authors used the CRISPR/Cas9 method to introduce these specific sequences into DNA inside the cell. The researchers managed to introduce up to seven OR-NOT elements into the cell, arranged both in parallel and sequentially.

Thus, the possibility of creating circuits that can perform useful actions is shown – to receive information about the environment from various sensors and perform calculations to find the right answer. One can imagine the appearance in the future of artificial immune cells that can recognize and respond to cancer markers or cellular biosensors that can easily diagnose infectious diseases in the patient's tissue.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  01.06.2017