What Will Be The Impact Of Programmable Cells On Our Future
With technology at its epic, almost everyone has access to priceless gadgets at reasonable prices. Facing lack of cash, you can even grab a used laptop or refurbished laptop in the ideal condition. By using a similar thought scientists and engineers got together to design the computers of the future which will be insignificant in price but great in value in medicine. They trained the bacteria so it can communicate with each other to give color-coded patterns. Confused?? As to what this is all about. Have endurance you will find all your answers.
No one could have imagined that we will survive to see a day when small computers could be structured out of living cells. As yet, we have observed various devices that can be controlled, but the notion of programming a tiny surviving cell is simply great. The idea is to employ living cells to find out hazards, get involved in the mending of tissues throughout a living body. It might further be a revelation that the scientists are wanting to train millions or perhaps billions of cells that will work together. The scientists trained the bacteria to give off a green fluorescent light as a responding signal to the one given by another group of cells. Fascinatingly, the signal was triggered by a chemical.
The amazing bit is that it was not only the genetic programming techniques that brought about this change, but also the manner those cells were made to act like digital circuits. Just imagine the idea of cells doing fundamental mathematical logic to produce solid readouts that one can conveniently associate with silicon chips. Now cells have the ability to send messages and at the same time other cells can even respond to those messages. The idea is to generate patterns such as the well known bull’s eye effect which will make the cells to secrete materials. These secreted materials will act as devices of great scientific use. Think of them as mini antennas or transmitters giving off signals from places humans cannot possibly reach.
Besides, programmed cells can further be used for construction and mending of tissues within the body. They can instruct the body’s natural defenses to the locations where growth is needed. The process called programmed tissue engineering is mainly of high advantage for the growth and mending of nerve and bone cells.
Through the computer patterns it is possible to view the complete behavior of the engineered cells and get a study of the responses of the organism with few modifications. Until now, the results from experiments have matched to a great extent with the computer models. But a true victory is when we can obtain the actual mathematical description of the working of every component of cell. This mesmerizing contribution to synthetic biology does not end on this spot. In future it will be possible to select a specific behavior from cells. This will be operated by a computer program which will create a genetic circuit. This will open up doors to extensive research in the usage to tiny computers in medicine.
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