The biological logic gate Via Professor Kitney
An AND logic gate made from Escherichia Coli (E.Coli) and DNA was made at the Imperial College London, demonstrating the much hypothesized concept of the biological computer. The experiment also showed how several of these gates can be connected to for other more complex forms, such as a NAND. The foundation is set, in-body biological computing is close.
Co-author of the paper, Professor Richard Kitney explained the concept further, "Logic gates are the fundamental building blocks in silicon circuitry that our entire digital age is based on. Without them, we could not process digital information. Now that we have demonstrated that we can replicate these parts using bacteria and DNA, we hope that our work could lead to a new generation of biological processors, whose applications in information processing could be as important as their electronic equivalents.”
The development team stated that their vision will lead such biological computers to searching out the body's ailments and handling them accordingly. For example, using a bio-circuit to find cancer cells and destroy them. In the meantime, the group is looking into building more complex organizations of the gates.
I can only imagine a 1-trillion gate biological processor would be too large to move through the blood stream. I am more curious about how the team will tackle that obstacle.
Eavesdropper