Biological Cells Can Now Do Arithmetic

The biological cell is an extremely advanced microscopic entity that can look after itself, but it's not exactly what you'd call smart. That's all about to change, though, because scientists are now making cells that can perform arithmetic—and the next stop stop is a living implant that can act as a computer.

Scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich have created biological versions of digital circuits inside two sets of embryonic kidney cells. One is a half adder, the other a half subtractor—in other words, they're circuits capable of adding or subtracting binary numbers.




The only problem—and there's always a problem with this kind of research—is that the output of the cells currently can't be used as the input to another, because the answer is given as a color of light, and not in terms of the input molecules. Still, if the team can work around that, it immediately opens up the possibility of using the cells to build up complex computational devices—and from there, a cellular computer is a cinch. [Nature via New Scientist]

Image by Tacu Alexei/Shutterstock