Biological Computers -Can They Sidestep the Laws of Physics?

In recent years Moore's Law, the idea the computing power will double every eighteen months, has seem less an amazing sign of progress and more an immense brick wall we're speeding towards - with recent advances like one-atom transistors, there simply isn't much further to go.  This has driven research in other directions that wouldn't have appealed back when regular chips could just get better and better.  3D chips, optical computing, quantum systems and even biological computers.

If the thought of doing complex mathematical problems makes you sick to your stomach, you might be able to help the solve the equations after all.  Scientists from Davidson College and Missouri Western State University have reprogrammed E. Coli bacteria, normally found doing their own thing in your stomach, to solve a mathematical problem in a cunning sidestep from classical computing - giving a whole new dimension to the term 'gut feeling'.

You like your brain?  Yeah, evolution can come up with some pretty damn fine results when it wants to.  The idea of a bacterial computer puts the evolutionary process to work solving mathematical problems. The terms of the problem are encoded in the genetic sequence of some harmless E. Coli bacteria (only a small minority of E. Coli cause all food the poisoning you hear about). They're also equipped with an antibiotic-resistance gene, but that gene is set only to activate when the genetic sequence is in the correct order - that is, when the problem is solved.  So when you place millions of these bacteria in a weak antibiotic solution solving the problem becomes a battle for survival.

Not that you'll ever be able to upgrade your hardware just by horking your stomach contents into it.  These bacterial computers are a fundamentally different system to silicon transistor number-crunchers, and can never match the latter's instruction execution rate.  Rather they would excel in problems where we don't have a clue what instructions to give, complex problems we don't know the best way to calculate can be evolved to an answer instead.

PS  Those who are so inclined should feel free to start their ill-informed scaremongering about evolution and antibiotic-resistance now, but be aware that in this instance you are quite hilariously wrong.

Posted by Luke McKinney.

Related Galaxy posts:

Quantum Computing & the Future of the Human Species -A Galaxy Insight
End of Moore's Law -New Future of the Computer Chip Predicted
“Hyper-Speed” Evolution Discovered
Atom-sized Computer Chips Coming Soon

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Bacterial computers