An Integrated Circuit Made of Ions Could Bring Computing Into Your Cells
Chemical Circuit A chemical chip can deliver a neurotransmitter like acetylcholine, which enables chemical control of muscles. Linköping University, Sweden The human body isn't a metal machine, but it's still plenty complicated, and regulating it like a machine is tough to pull off. That's why a new discovery by Klas Tybrandt, a doctoral student in Organic Electronics at Linköping University, Sweden, is exciting: he's developed the first integrated chemical chip, similar to silicon-based electronics, but for biologic material. A chemical circuit made from it lets chemical substances-different types with different purposes-travel through the body, but still keeps them under control. Send a certain chemical to muscle synapses that aren't signaling, for example, and guide it via the circuit. (The big chemical contender in this seems to be the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which enables control of muscles.) Before this, the Organic Electronics research group at Linköping University had already developed transistors for transporting...