{"id":196733,"date":"2024-09-28T01:22:53","date_gmt":"2024-09-28T06:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/09\/genetically-engineered-bacteria-solve-computational-problems"},"modified":"2024-09-28T01:22:53","modified_gmt":"2024-09-28T06:22:53","slug":"genetically-engineered-bacteria-solve-computational-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/09\/genetically-engineered-bacteria-solve-computational-problems","title":{"rendered":"Genetically engineered bacteria solve computational problems"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Researchers have developed a groundbreaking system that uses bacteria to mimic the problem-solving capabilities of artificial neural networks.<\/p>\n

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Cell-based biocomputing is a novel technique that uses cellular processes to perform computations. Such micron-scale biocomputers could overcome many of the energy, cost and technological limitations of conventional microprocessor-based computers, but the technology is still very much in its infancy. One of the key challenges is the creation of cell-based systems that can solve complex computational problems.<\/p>\n

Now a research team from the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics<\/a> in India has used genetically modified bacteria to create a cell-based biocomputer with problem-solving capabilities. The researchers created 14 engineered bacterial cells, each of which functioned as a modular and configurable system. They demonstrated that by mixing and matching appropriate modules, the resulting multicellular system could solve nine yes\/no computational decision problems and one optimization problem.<\/p>\n

The cellular system, described in Nature Chemical Biology<\/em><\/a>, can identify prime numbers, check whether a given letter is a vowel, and even determine the maximum number of pizza or pie slices obtained from a specific number of straight cuts. Here, senior author Sangram Bagh<\/a> explains the study\u2019s aims and findings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers have developed a groundbreaking system that uses bacteria to mimic the problem-solving capabilities of artificial neural networks. Cell-based biocomputing is a novel technique that uses cellular processes to perform computations. Such micron-scale biocomputers could overcome many of the energy, cost and technological limitations of conventional microprocessor-based computers, but the technology is still very much [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[412,219,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genetics","category-physics","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}