Cyborg Yeast's Genes Are Controlled By a Computer
Brewer's Yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae under the microscope. Wikipedia The ability to make cells do our bidding would be a major advance in everything from drug production to biofuels, but it's difficult to hack into nature and make cells obey. A team of Swiss researchers have one way to do it: Create cyborg cells connected to, and controlled by, a computer. Researchers at ETH Zurich were able to form a feedback loop between a common form of yeast and a computer, which controlled light pulses to precisely control the expression of genes. It's different from other cell-control techniques we have seen, like simple genetic modification or synthetic circuitry. Instead, the Swiss team modifies some light-coding proteins and connects the cell to a computer model, which uses algorithms to read out the light responses and determine cellular feedback. It's an in vivo, in silico network. Andreas Milias-Argeitis and colleagues started with Saccharomyces cerevisiae - brewer's...