Public Release: 

New device could make large biological circuits practical

Massachusetts Institute of Technology



The lead author of the paper is Deepak Mishra, an MIT graduate student in biological engineering. Other authors include recent master's students Phillip Rivera in mechanical engineering and Allen Lin in electrical engineering and computer science.

There are many potential uses for such synthetic biological circuits, Del Vecchio and Weiss explain. "One specific one we're working on is biosensing -- cells that can detect specific molecules in the environment and produce a specific output in response," Del Vecchio says. One example: cells that could detect markers that indicate the presence of cancer cells, and then trigger the release of molecules targeted to kill those cells.

It is important for such circuits to be able to discriminate accurately between cancerous and noncancerous cells, so they don't unleash their killing power in the wrong places, Weiss says. To do that, robust information-processing circuits created from biological elements within a cell become "highly critical," Weiss says.



"If you put the circuit together and you expect answer 'X,' and instead you get answer 'Y,' that could be highly problematical," Del Vecchio says.



The addition of this load driver to the arsenal of components available to those designing biological circuits, Del Vecchio says, "could escalate the complexity of circuits you could design," opening up new possible applications while ensuring that their operation is "robust and predictable."


