WIKIMEDIA, Mattosaurs/NIAIDCreating gene circuits that respond to a range of inputs has allowed researchers to create cell-based calculators that can perform complicated mathematical functions, in new research published last week (May 15) in Nature. Scientists expect that cell-based circuitry, which responds to environmental changes along a wide range, will open up new applications for these cellular computers.
“It’s a conceptual advance in the field,” said James Collins, a synthetic biologist at Boston University who was not involved in the research. The researchers have “now shown they can develop a broad class of circuits to exploit analog dynamics inside living cells.”
Most efforts to design synthetic gene-based circuits inside living cells have focused on digital strategies, such as using the presence or absence of a chemical to induce a binary cell fate decision, like whether or not to differentiate, for example. But creating a circuit that transforms a digital input into a digital output contravenes cells’ natural tendencies to respond to analog changes, such as increases or decreases in chemical concentration, noted Ahmad Khalil, a synthetic and systems biologist at Boston University, who ...
