DevOps Articles

Distributed E. Coli Biocomputer Solves Maze Problems

The notion of https://www.techopedia.com/definition/7/distributed-computing-system — in other words, solving problems with a system whose components are located on different networked computers — has been around for several decades now. Such distributed systems are more scalable, fault-tolerant and resilient, as other nodes in the network can continue to function even if another portion of the system fails. Distributed systems can also offer more computational power compared to a standalone machine, which can be leveraged to accomplish amazing feats like helping https://thenewstack.io/distributed-computing-at-work-600-million-collisions-to-make-a-pentaquark-discovery-in-particle-physics/, to citizen scientists potentially https://thenewstack.io/distributed-supercomputing-before-the-cloud-the-legacy-of-setihome/.

“Our engineered bacteria, which consisted of six different genetic logic circuits and distributed among six-cell populations processed the chemical information and solved the problems by expressing, or not expressing, four different fluorescent proteins,” said the team.

Generating such abstract mathematical mazes using chemicals, and solving them with engineered bacteria might inspire new possibilities in cellular computing and information processing.”