Readers of this blog (all 2 of you 🙂 ) and people who know me, know that I have always been interested in Bio/DNA computers and have even written about them in the past. But to my sorrow most of the current work on Bio computers is still in the very theoretical stage.
Recently, Researchers at Imperial College London have claimed to have successfully built logic gates out of bacteria and DNA. The team built an AND gate using e-coli (Escherichia coli) bacteria which is normally found in the lower intestine and another team built on top of that to create a NAND gate which is basically an AND gate combined with a NOT gate.
While this doesn’t sound like much it is indeed a step forward because all computers are basically a collection of logic gates and if the team can manage to connect more of them together then we have the beginnings of a working Bio computer.
More details on their work is available at: Scientists create computing building blocks from bacteria and DNA
The study can be downloaded from here.
As always if I find more information I will post a follow-up entry here.
– Suramya