Scientists Take a Giant Step Forward in Creating a Computer that Functions in Human Cells

Using biological tissue, scientists from Stanford University have devised what is believed to be the last needed device in order to create computers capable of operating within a human cell.

"We want to make tools to put computers inside any living cell - a little bit of data storage, a way to communicate, and logic," said the study's leader and Stanford bioengineer Drew Endy, according to MIT Technology Review.

The device does exactly that by acting like a transistor, a semiconductor used to amplify and switch signals and electrical power, and is capable of making changes to a cell's genome and then creating a transcript of the cell's activities.

Called a transcriptor, scientists hope that with this puzzle piece in place they can begin work sooner on biological computers that can be inserted into human cells in order to play a variety of tasks, including staving off disease.

"The first things that can be done are more precise biosensing," study co-author Jerome Bonnet said, according to the Guardian. "You could see if a cell has been exposed to different combinations of chemicals, and have a specific signal only when a certain pattern of interest shows up, say glucose and caffeine."

Sugar and caffeine aren't the only patterns the computer could identify. Say, for example, mercury made its way into a person's system - the biological computers could identify this as well.

In the case of cancer, they would be able to count the amount of times a cell divides and thus identify a person the moment it begins to do so at the prolific rates that give rise to the illness.

What's more, the computers could be programmed to heal.

"In the longer term we hope biocomputers can be used to study and reprogram living systems and improve cellular therapeutics," Bonnet told the Guardian.