This Bacterium Can Do Division, Compute Logarithms And Take Square Roots
Bacterial Calculation Ramiz Daniel, Jacob R. Rubens, Rahul Sarpeshkar, Timothy K. Lu via MIT MIT researchers engineered bacterial cells to function as living calculators. A group of engineers from MIT have created analog calculators out of living cells, according to a paper published online in Nature yesterday. By tweaking the genes of bacterial cells, the researchers were able to create circuits that can perform calculations--including division, multiplication, logarithms and square roots--in a much more efficient way than many existing biocomputers. Using analog circuits, which harness a cell's natural biochemical functions, allows for more nuanced computations than imposing digital logic. While digital circuits classify all values as zeros and ones, analog circuits can handle a continuous range of inputs, allowing for values in between. In addition to computing whether or not a molecule like glucose is present, these circuits can tell its concentration, for instance. "Analog computation is very efficient," senior...