Can We Program a Living Cell Like an Engineer Program a Device?
Abstract:
Living cells are special soft condensed matter with a unique characteristic called ‘life’. Interestingly, the cells are programmed to perform a set of complex life processes and all those information are stored in the genome within the cell. The molecular connectivity between genes and proteins inside a cell shows a good degree of resemblance with complex electrical circuits. This inspires the possibility of engineering a cell similar to an engineering device. Synthetic biology is an emerging field of bioengineering, where scientist use electrical and computer engineering principle to re-program cellular function for creating new cellular function with a potential to solve next generation challenges in medicine, energy, and space travel. In this talk, we discuss our synthetic biology efforts to build a technology platform for cellular robotics and systems biology effort to understand the effect of zero gravity on human and bacterial cells during space travel.