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Science

Biotransistors 86

Posted by Hemos from the old-idea-in-a-new-cellular-wall dept.
Quite a number of people have written in over the last day or so regarding the article in EE Times about the possibility of integrating bacteria into semiconductors. The hope would be to make biotransistors with "unique capabilites." The idea, itself, isn't a new one however and work has been going on in this area for a while. Like the quantum machine, a lot of the work in this area probably won't see practical fruition for quite some time.
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Biotransistors More

Biotransistors

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  • See subject. That is how we know the idea
    comes from the computer industry.
  • Take your bias, church loving shit else where. What gives YOU the right to force YOUR religion on the rest of us? Everyone in america has the right to choose what to worship, if they wish to worship at all. if you hate science so much, unplug your computer and all your other modern conveniences and go live in the woods for the rest of your life. Let your $DEITY take care of you.
  • If you *do* get one, I'll be really confused since your user # is higher than all of us who "Haven't been Slashdot Users long enough" to meta-mod.
  • I don't think the excitement is over some unnamed thing that bacteria can do that silicon can't. I think the excitement is about the manufacturing. Look how hard it is to create chips--ultra-clean conditions, etc. Whereas with bacteria, just build a mold (ha ha), swab some sugar on it, dip it into a tank full of bacteria and viola! You have a biochip!

    Of course, I'm exaggerating. But still, what's easier: growing a chip or building one?
    --
  • Hey, you are not too far off. Scientific American had an article on doing PCR at home last month.
  • My user page has said that for a few days... I haven't had points in about 2 weeks... a little strange, isn't it? Methinks Rob is playing with something.

    --
  • I just now finishd metamodding. Don't know if it was there last night or not, I didn't stay up very late...
  • I've still been metamoding every night. If I don't get a new link tonight, I'll let you know...
  • Gives a whole new meaning to server farms doesn't it? ;-)

    -Ben
  • Intel introduces the new "Bacterium III Processor!"
    Makes yogurt and bread in half the time!
  • Old news, d00d. I have Windows 98 running in
    my septic tank right now.
  • Now you can bring down someone's webserver with penecillin
  • The six million dollar man would disaggree with you. hehehe
  • The July issue of Wired has another article [wired.com] on the subject.
  • According to the Christian creation myth, we were created in Gods own image. Perhaps we are to be creators as well? Perhaps it is our purpose to advance life in all ways we can, and find new ways to use it. Adam was given dominion over all "lesser" life forms than the human, and presumably that charge would pass on to his descendants, and if you believe in the Judeo/Christian myth that means humanity as a whole has dominion over bacteria. Which means we have the right to use it. Also, Slashdot is religously neutral. The staff certainly has their own religious beliefs or lack thereof, which may or may not mesh with yours. Same goes for members. You have every right to present your views, but suggesting Slashdot ignore the stories entirely is ludicrous. If the word of these things never gets out, noone can protest, so if its morally wrong, it will go through without anyone saying it shouldn't. Slashdot is not necesarily promoting theses ideas, but presenting them and letting us discuss the matter freely. This fits in their theme of "News for nerds, stuff that matters". Thus, it should be here for discussion.
  • Oh, so it's *not* just me. Yes, my users.pl also says i am a moderator with 0 points. And yes, the M2 link is missing. Yes, this has been happening for a few days. :)

    Anyone mailed Rob/Taco about it yet though?
  • Personally, whether the bio-chips work out or not (I expect they will eventually), a more immediate source of interest for me is watching how many /. posters, having slammed the space program for too many dollars spent on projects with no immediate benefit, will support a computer-related project doing precisely the same thing.

    FWIW, I support both.

  • Sure it does. If you call the interviews with people news.

    oojah
  • It's possible to support space exploration but be opposed to NASA. Space exploration is a worthwhile, important effort and should not be left in the hands of petty, squabbling, empire-building government beaurocrats. IMHO, NASA should be dissolved and have it's budget doled out directly to institutions (academic & corporate) doing aerospace research. There may be many bright people at NASA, but the corporate culture is so intrenched that nothing productive can get done.

    "The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
  • You can't just stuff a bunch of bacteria in a semiconducting concoction, go take a coffee break and expect to have a working chip when you get back

    Obviously you haven't tried Kool Aid[tm] Brand Refreshing Microchips. Now in 5 flavors!

  • But who knows, maybe soon we'll make little unsentient beings slaves to our technology! =P

    You mean like Microsoft did with Win95?

  • I've heard of cyanobacteria, but cyborg bacteria? How long before Hollywood produce some lame movies about the subject, getting almost all aspects of science wrong (as they invariably do)?

  • For 20 years, I've had the ability to have gleeful, cybergenic sex with my computer module after being refuted by girls. And now, NOW WHAT DO I HAVE TO TURN TO? Ugh. With the possibilities of me contracting std's from getting jiggy with my CD-ROM and other various computer parts, what can I do? Can you give computers anti-biotics? Oh well. I guess I'll have to use my incredible mental prowess to think of a new way to satisfy myself.

    Sincerely,
    Bongo
    La rue de l'amour avec les ordinateurs

  • Yeah, and the Mitochondria mate with the Midichlorians, right?

    You believe it's this boy...?

  • Aren't we having one right now?

  • Even better would be if you could get electricity out of them based on their eating something you didn't need lying around in your bloodstream. Then you could integrate them with traditional electronics and use them for biomonitoring, or pacemakers, limb control, et cetera.

  • How can you be sure that God's plan is not to see how much we can learn about the universe that he went to such extraordinary lengths to develop. Why would God make semi-conductors if not for humans? Why do you even read slashdot? It's tech news. Everything here will offend you. This is the second time I've replied to your comments so that people don't assume all Christians are like you. God made bacteria. They are not anti-Christian. He also made silicon. He put it everywhere. Why do you assume he doesn't want us to take advantage of the wonderful things he gave us? I have so much more to say, but I won't because you won't listen, and no one else cares. Everyone else, I'm sorry.
  • I realize that now. I had to reply just in case he was some horribly misguided soul. I was just making sure that the Christian haters knew that we aren't all freaky people who hate science.

  • Yep (Score:1)

    by HiQ ( 159108 )
    At least we can do some *proper* debugging!
    How to make a sig
    without having an idea
  • Why do you use any technology at all? isn't anything but running around naked and scavenging a perversion of "gods design"? What about potted plants? domestic animals? are not these perversions? Where is your line Jon?
  • I wonder what the future of this is.

    It makes me think alittle of the big power plants in Matrix but instead of robots using humans human uses bacteria..

    Besides, what happens if a bacteria or a significant percentile of the bacterias dies? The hardware companies would love that.

    - I don't exist, do you?
  • You think you got problems? My NIC has genital herpes!

    That's the last time I leave tcpdump running...

  • The first thing that occurs to me is that all of this tech could be wiped out by a hostile microbe or virus; pretty much as happened to all the superconductors in Larry Niven's novel. It's vaguely cool, but I wouldn't want anything irreplacable to be running on it.

    There seems to be a tendency towards this kind of non-robust tech, tech thats subject to various kinds of natural disasters. I'm predicting that a number of companies that rely heavily on wireless communications will crash and burn the next time we get a significant solar storm.

  • Same message shows up on my info screen. Guess they're saying that us moderating would be pointless.
  • If I recall correctly, Voyager uses "Bioneural Gel Packs" so route power and data. This seems to be a similar concept to a bio-transistor, just a lot more complex. But who knows, maybe soon we'll make little unsentient beings slaves to our technology! =P
  • I don't think that this would ever have been found in the private sector.

    I too came across all sorts of bacteria at university, but that was due to living with slobs.
  • Wel...ghh.. I can't finish the messagee, my computer iiss-s dy--i---ngg............

    I have an alter-ego at Red Dwarf. Don't remind me that coward.

  • 1. Size. These bactirium can supposedly create a biotransistor 5 microns square. 2. Power handling. The article states that the organic membranes may be able to handle >1MegaVolt. 3. Rugedness. They can't kill the things with ultraviolet, or other means. And with the ability to handle >1 MegaVolt potentials, it could reduce or elimnate static discharge damage. AS far as what they eat, I would guess from the article, that the bactirium are usually, if not always, in a state of perpetual hibernation, requiring no substanance. In fact, feeding them could be bad, as it would induce them into division. This could cause breakage, short circuits, or who knows what. I wouldn't want to come home to a computer foaming at the floppy.
  • From the article,

    "When we started this study, we were just trying to find the source of bacteria in the fab, and how they could remain alive after all the heroic measures to eradicate them with ultraviolet light, ozone and everything else including a dollar a gallon to purify the water,"

    If we can't kill the trolls, maybe we can put them to work?
  • expecting results time after time, you are going to get a big let down eventually. Hmmm, doesn't this sound familiar? Oh, wait, I have learned to expect that operating system to crash.
  • Or you could grow your own. Scientific American for August has this article [scientificamerican.com] on growing your own plankton. Processors couldn't be much more complicated than rotifers, eh?
  • Will I have to feed my computer in the future?? Sorry...I don't know what I am talking about..
  • To call using bacteria for microchips or other human uses, slavery, is silly at best. We harness microbes for our purposes all the time--yogurt, penicillin, the ecoli bacterium in your lower digestive system (yes we use them and need them).

    Slavery would imply that they were free to begin with--as though they had a free will. The truth is a microbe living in an environment that it was designed to live in will be as free as you or I living in the environments that we were designed to live in. So what if humans happen to derive benefit from it?

    "Just because I don't care doesn't mean I won't listen."
  • No, because if the Borg where running Win2k, then they would never get anywhere. They would always be running into eachother or saying things like "You will be assimmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.... ERROR: This program has preformed an illegal opperation and will be shut down." followed shortly by self-destruction. Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "My computer crashed".
  • Wow... merging 3 different Slashdot threads into one very funny post. Definitely deserves the 5 score.

    Of course, I just hope that it doesn't mean we'll be colonizing the universe with copies of Windows 2000. Now there's a scary thougth.

    But then, that would explain the Borgs...
  • "Open the doors, HAL".
    "I'm sorry, Dave. I have a cold".

    Stupid joke, I know...
  • Hmm.. I guess those overheating problems could literaly *KILL* my computer with these chips.

    --------------------------------------
  • I'm looking forward to plug my keyboard and my monitor to my mum when she's ill. Thousands and millions of bacterias! This should rock. Imagine some nerds speaking: Hey, my grandma has 13 GFLOPS - Ha, my mum does Quake VII with 134 fps, but she's getting healthier every day ...
  • Will their rotten little bacteria bodies start smellin up my computer? My wife would never let me get a computer that reeks of rotten flesh...I think they need to find something that isn't gonna stink to high heaven to make a chip out of....why mess with bacteria when we still don't have light chips?
  • Jon, I think that if god had not wanted us to be scientists or develop these kinds of technologies he would have done something about it at the moment of creation. As things are now we live in a universe in which all these things are possible because there are laws of matter and energy that make it possible.

    If you believe there is a god then yes indeed these are gods laws of what is possible and what isn't. We simply can do these things with matter and energy because they have the properties allowing us to do so.

    I myself believe in the presence of a universal spirit but I also believe this is a free will universe, of course within the constraints of the laws of matter & energy. I believe morality is a social regulator thats important to make sure we can, as a whole, identify and isolate depraved people, it's not to stop us from developing our potential.

    There will be a raging debate going on however about the morality of these issues. I'm not sure at all whether it would be wise to integrate us with computers, in some cases yes, in some no. However there is no jurisprudence, be it legal or religious on these issues so we'll all going to have to figure this out collectively.

    Unfortunately I believe the moral debate will be too little too late to stop developments. By the time people are aware of what's going on with cyborg integration it'll be too beneficial, espeically medically, to just forbid it entirely; which is impossible anyway since you can always set up lab in a country where you can buy your own laws.

  • Unfortunately, i cant think of some sad joke to make about this, as everyone else has already thought of them. Can you just moderate up this post anyway?
  • Maybe I'm off the mark, but this would seem to be interesting for the AI researchers. After all, a sufficiently large matrix of biotransistors would mimic the brain rather closely, in some senses anyway. Could lead to some interesting, and in some cases possibly distrubing, issues.

    -={(Astynax)}=-
  • Subsitute "virii" for "viruseses" where you like. I hate this language. :)

  • Why don't we put brain cells on a chip?

    No, wait, why don't we train small animals to act like computers?

    In fact, and this might seem really far out, why don't we pay illegal immigrants $1/hour to do our sums for us?

  • It wouldn't call it slavery unless the organic components are capable of dislikeing thier work. This would require awareness, which only complex life is cabable of. Besides the term slavery was never used to describe farm animals.
  • As I read this, earlier today, I was reminded of a news bit that I saw on @Discovery.ca a while back. (http://www.exn.ca/Stories/2000/05/30/5 4.cfm) [www.exn.ca]

    The gist of it was that engineers at University of Toronto had been able to make a silicon mesh that was capable of performing the same operations as a transistor, except using light. Oh the possibilities!

    So I started thinking. I don't think that these "biotransistors" are appropriate for computing technology. They might make a good control chip for a bionic appendage, but that's about it. These bacteria have to eat. And as so many others have pointed out, it would get a bit ridiculous to have to wake up, feed the cats, the fish, and the computer. I think they're only practical in situations where they can be attached to an existing food supply, like blood, because we all know that the average user will forget to feed their computer.

    ciao.
  • lover life forms
    What, like Barry White?
  • Ok, this is way OT, but please don't mod me to oblivion.

    A few of us have noticed that the meta-mod link is now gone from the main /. page. If we go straight to metamod.pl, is says that we haven't been Slashdotters long enough to meta-mod even though we've meta-modded many times in the past. Does anyone have the scoop on this? Did they change the m2 rules so that you have to have been a member (for lack of a better word) longer? Did they disable it altogether? Go to the metamod [slashdot.org] page and post any info you may have. Thx.
  • The researchers of this or whatever are really oversimplifying the issue.

    Plant metabolism isn't my big thing but what happens in a photosynthetic plant is there's a stacks of photo sensitive organelles called thylakoids. In the membrane of the thylakoids there is chrolophyll which basically has a set of repeating single and double bonds and when the light strikes it, it bumps one of the bonds into a higher energy resonant structure. Then the cholophyll falls back down to its the lower energy, the energy which is in the form of a bond, not a free electron as in electricity in a wire, is carried to a membrane bound set of protiens where the electron is ultimately supplied by H20. There is a electron transfering moleule called NAD+ which transports electrons. The energy provided by the bonds is ultimately tranfered to the NAD+ which is reduced to NADH and O2 is liberated as a gas. So we not talking about a flow of elctrons like in a wire. The electron is bound up in another molecule.. Which will ultimately be used to create a H+ gradient to drive the production of ATP.

    I can see using chlorophyll as a light sensitive device.. but I can't see the use of the whole cell as a light sensitive device, it simply wasn't designed with that purpose in mind.. And it seems like an opportunity to get at the electron would be far down the line and would create so much latency (I may be wrong about that)that it wouldn't be usedful in elcetronic devices.

    It's an interesting idea but I think the propects for encorporating oraganics and electronics lie with using small numbers of molecules.. For instance chlorophyll may have some applications as an optical device of some sort.
  • Yes, How dare we enslave these bacterium in the name of technology? These microbes have rights too. Now let's all give up on this foolishness of Biotransistors and the like. We should demand that the poor enslaved bacteria be set back into their enviornment where they can fill their lives with hard work making Antibiotics and other medicines.

    Devil Ducky
  • Talk about microcode updates... :)
  • Interesting. I logged on today to see this:
    You are a moderator with 0 points.
    Um, thanks? What kind of crap is that? (I've never been a moderator before but.... Does that happen often?)

    The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
  • Just out of interest.. how many slashdotters knew that this kind of embedded bacteria concept is already hundreds of millions of years old.. and that the most dominant lifeform on the planet is in fact a symbiote.. photosynthesising plants actually contain single bacteria in each energy producing cell that takes part in the fundamental process of photosynthesis.. Interestin', huh ??
  • Yeah. Some scr1pt k1dd13 with a Biology degree and access to a lab is working on Pentium Pox as we speak...
  • Not computer viruses in the transistors, but other viruses can be harmful... "What's up?" "My Voodo3 has a cold..." "That's nothing! My motherboard's got AIDS!" =)
  • Not with this technology.

    This stuff is mostly the same as regular ICs, just they're using bacteria as the doping element. So, the limiting factor is still how to route 10,000 interconnections between each and every "neuron". Even with "biotransistors", you're still light years away from mimicking a real brain (and really, no closer than you were with regular transistors).

    --

  • Gotta love the idea of growing processors rather than building them. Talk about knocking the price down a notch. You could go to the drive through for all your semiconductor needs rather than having to mail order them, and you could afford a reasonable computer on a day's salary.

  • And do you think electrons have it easy? Show a little consistency.
  • Yeah? Well mine's got Ebola!

    Or maybe it's just dripping that coffee I spilt on it yesterday...
  • I'm wondering does slashdot do anymore real news, or depend on everyone else to supply news for them so /. don't have to do anything?
  • They don't need to inject them into us. They just need to make sure that they aren't going to be broken down by the digestive juices and sneak them into our food.
  • Or make your own after a Taco Bell(R) burrito
  • These developments are a blessing to those of us who for example have diabetes.

    Suppose an integrated system is developed that measures sugar levels in the blood stream and has a piece of DNA or RNA, or a whole bacteria, that can generate insulin, then you wont have to go get injections or have your system flushed every other day. I guess some smart people will think up ways to adapt such circuitry to use the citric acid cycle [mit.edu] to get its own energy.

    It simply means you can generate tightly controlled amounts of substances where needed, when needed, in the amounts needed.

  • We've also got autonomous life forms inside each of our cells, without them the cell as a unit wouldn't be possible; they're called Mitocho ndria [ultranet.com] and are reponsible for energy production. They're matrilinear in descent since they're introduced into us through the mothers egg cell; they have their own DNA.

    These got to be the same little buggers that anakim skywalker had in such big count :)

  • Re:Who does the work (Score:3)

    by softsign ( 120322 ) on Tuesday August 01, 2000 @03:27AM (#889528)
    But still, what's easier: growing a chip or building one?

    I don't think there's any difference here, really. You can't just stuff a bunch of bacteria in a semiconducting concoction, go take a coffee break and expect to have a working chip when you get back.

    You would still have to go through meticulous design and some sort of silicon fab process (which also involves "growing" crystals and oxides)

    --

  • We've been using them for years... (Score:3)

    by theta_butterfly ( 203260 ) on Tuesday August 01, 2000 @07:58AM (#889529)
    Why all the controversy about using bacteria? I took my intro bio lab class at MIT last semester, and bacteria were used in the three out of four modules (Genetics, Protein Biochemistry, and Recombinant DNA Techniques) precisely b/c they are model organisms: they grow fast, they respond quickly to specific environmental stimuli, etc. Besides, when you think about it, our bodies have probably been using bacteria to generate enery. Mitochondria are thought to be bacteria that entered our bodies in a symbotic relationship: we give them protection, they provide us with energy. Think about it: mitochondria is the only organelle to have its own DNA (and circular, i might add, just like bacteria), it has a double layered membrane with cristae (the creases on the on the inner membrane), and they use the membrane to generate the ATP (adenosine triphosphate) though cellular respiration that we need to survive. If you've got problems using bacteria in transistors, well, maybe you better take a look at the machinery that runs your body.

  • Relative size of bacterium vs. viruses (Score:3)

    by wadetemp ( 217315 ) on Tuesday August 01, 2000 @04:25AM (#889530)
    This seems great and all, but compared to most things, bacteria are pretty large. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think they are smaller than an equivalent transistor. So what is the big deal here? So they act like transistors? So what? For the most part, so do vacuum tubes and light switches.

    Now if they figured out a way to do something similar with viruses, this might be interesting. They are many orders of magnitude smaller than a bacterium.

  • relying on living material (Score:4)

    by xodarap ( 65815 ) on Tuesday August 01, 2000 @02:30AM (#889531) Homepage
    It seems to me that if you are using bacteria in this manner expecting exact results time after time, you are going to get a big let down eventually. Lets say some other random bacteria gets into the case and attacks the bacteria in your chip. Or the culture fails to replicate the 942'th generation. Or it mutates and suddenly provides 2 free electrons instead of 1. There seems to me to be too many variables in this theoretical hardware to even warrant exploring it.

    "Join me or die! Can you do any less?"
    --Mr. Sparkle

  • "I will 0wn j00 with m4h ant1bi0tik skillz!" (Score:4)

    by Emerson Willowick ( 215198 ) on Tuesday August 01, 2000 @02:11AM (#889532)
    Now instead of trying to hax0r into someone's computer and trying to 0wn them with 31337 skills, all you'd have to do is sneak into his room and smear Neosporin all over his PC :) Enter the new wave of 31337 hax0rs.


  • That not a bug it's a feature (Score:5)

    by jjr ( 6873 ) on Tuesday August 01, 2000 @02:19AM (#889533) Homepage
    Brings a new meaning to that phrase. And I quote "Now we are turning a problem into a feature."

  • Is this really that useful? (Score:5)

    by blacksmith ( 42129 ) on Tuesday August 01, 2000 @02:19AM (#889534) Homepage

    I don't see anything particularly new here. The article mentions using photosensitive bacteria to act as "biotransistors", and gets very excited about the fact that when light shines on a photosensitive bacterium, it yields up an electron that could be used to switch a primitive biotransistor. I don't see how this is really any different from a conventional semiconductor.

    Also, the article mentions using these bacteria as optical amplifiers - nothing very exciting there either. Optical amplifiers have been around for quite a while now after all, in the form of Erbium Doped Fibre amps.

  • Re:What do they eat? (Score:5)

    by Devil Ducky ( 48672 ) <slashdot@devilducky.org> on Tuesday August 01, 2000 @02:51AM (#889535) Homepage
    As long as the bacteria are still alive, they would require some sort of substanance. But before any thing if this sort would become truly feasible some sort of atuomatic feeding system would have to be developed. It could be possible that they recieve their food from the air, or from a feeding plate, etc. But I wouldn't want my computer to die just because I have a "black thumb."

    Devil Ducky

  • More dumb processor names (Score:5)

    by Duxup ( 72775 ) on Tuesday August 01, 2000 @02:25AM (#889536) Homepage
    Now we'll see more stupid processor names like Ebola and the Salmonella III.

    So much for eating near my computer.

  • Biochips in space! (Score:5)

    by laborit ( 90558 ) on Tuesday August 01, 2000 @02:28AM (#889537) Homepage
    Hey, combine this with the previous article (bacteria can survive in orbit) and we could have computers seeding the cosmos! All those people who wanted to buy Seti@home coprocessors will be lining up to launch their boxes into the void, hoping to bring life to some distant planet...

    - Michael Cohn

  • Viruses (Score:5)

    by BrianW ( 180468 ) on Tuesday August 01, 2000 @02:04AM (#889538)
    Will we have to worry about computer viruses?

  • Bacteria (Score:5)

    by ariehk ( 215517 ) on Tuesday August 01, 2000 @02:15AM (#889539) Homepage
    This idea sounds all well and good, but we are talking about slavery here!

    How can we allow poor, innocent bacteria to work our chips for us? What did they do to deserve it?

    Remember, we have a responsibility to lover life forms. Don't buy these chips, they are evil.

    On a different note, I wonder whether they are resistent to antibiotics. It would be great to destroy someone's hardware by giving it medicine.

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