WEEK 14:A Different Kind of IT: Accessibility and Assistive Technology

From Bacteria to Biological Computer

    An amazing aspect of living in The Fourth Industrial Era is that we are at a new inflection point in bringing emerging technologies to life. We are in an era of scientific breakthroughs that will change the way of life as we currently know it. New Techno-fusion, Biological Computer, Human Brain Interface, Emerging Bio-Science and Health Security Implications for Biometrics would be the instances. In this article, I will talk about turning bacteria cells into biological computers.

Bio-computers may one day be able to store the DNA of living cells. This innovation might store almost infinite quantities of data and allow bio-computers to do complicated operations that are currently beyond human capabilities. The Technion has developed a biological computer that is stored within a bacterial cell and can detect various elements in the environment. The computer now recognizes and reports on harmful items.

The research by Ph.D. student Natalia Barger and Assistant Professor Ramez Daniel, head of the Synthetic Biology and Bioelectronics Lab at the Technion’s Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, was published in September 2019 in the journal Nucleic Acids Research (NAR). 

I impressed when I heard this: “We built a kind of biological computer in the living cells. In this computer, as in regular computers, circuits carry out complicated calculations,” said Barger. “Only here, these circuits are genetic, not electronic, and information are carried by proteins and not electrons.” 

Imagine the technology of The Fifth Industrial Era.😲