The biological microprocessor, or how to build a computer with biological parts

Microbiome and Human Health: Current Understanding, Engineering, and Enabling Technologies

The human microbiome is composed of a collection of dynamic microbial communities that inhabit various anatomical locations in the body. Accordingly, the coevolution of the microbiome with the host has resulted in these communities playing a profound role in promoting human health. Consequently, perturbations in the human microbiome can cause or exacerbate several diseases. In this Review, we present our current understanding of the relationship between human health and disease development, focusing on the microbiomes found across the digestive, respiratory, urinary, and reproductive systems as well as the skin. We further discuss various strategies by which the composition and function of the human microbiome can be modulated to exert a therapeutic effect on the host. Finally, we examine technologies such as multiomics approaches and cellular reprogramming of microbes that can enable significant advancements in microbiome research and engineering.

Scalable radiative thermal logic gates based on nanoparticle networks

We discuss the design of the thermal analog of logic gates in systems made of a collection of nanoparticles. We demonstrate the possibility to perform NOT, OR, NOR, AND and NAND logical operations at submicrometric scale by controlling the near-field radiative heat exchanges between their components. We also address the important point of the role played by the inherent non-additivity of radiative heat transfer in the combination of logic gates. These results pave the way to the development of compact thermal circuits for information processing and thermal management.

Nanosystems, Edge Computing, and the Next Generation Computing Systems

It is widely recognized that nanoscience and nanotechnology and their subfields, such as nanophotonics, nanoelectronics, and nanomechanics, have had a tremendous impact on recent advances in sensing, imaging, and communication, with notable developments, including novel transistors and processor architectures. For example, in addition to being supremely fast, optical and photonic components and devices are capable of operating across multiple orders of magnitude length, power, and spectral scales, encompassing the range from macroscopic device sizes and kW energies to atomic domains and single-photon energies. The extreme versatility of the associated electromagnetic phenomena and applications, both classical and quantum, are therefore highly appealing to the rapidly evolving computing and communication realms, where innovations in both hardware and software are necessary to meet the growing speed and memory requirements. Development of all-optical components, photonic chips, interconnects, and processors will bring the speed of light, photon coherence properties, field confinement and enhancement, information-carrying capacity, and the broad spectrum of light into the high-performance computing, the internet of things, and industries related to cloud, fog, and recently edge computing. Conversely, owing to their extraordinary properties, 0D, 1D, and 2D materials are being explored as a physical basis for the next generation of logic components and processors. Carbon nanotubes, for example, have been recently used to create a new processor beyond proof of principle. These developments, in conjunction with neuromorphic and quantum computing, are envisioned to maintain the growth of computing power beyond the projected plateau for silicon technology. We survey the qualitative figures of merit of technologies of current interest for the next generation computing with an emphasis on edge computing.

Macroscale Biomolecular Electronics and Ionics

The conduction of ions and electrons over multiple length scales is central to the processes that drive the biological world. The multidisciplinary attempts to elucidate the physics and chemistry of electron, proton, and ion transfer in biological charge transfer have focused primarily on the nano- and microscales. However, recently significant progress has been made on biomolecular materials that can support ion and electron currents over millimeters if not centimeters. Likewise, similar transport phenomena in organic semiconductors and ionics have led to new innovations in a wide variety of applications from energy generation and storage to displays and bioelectronics. Here, the underlying principles of conduction on the macroscale in biomolecular materials are discussed, highlighting recent examples, and particularly the establishment of accurate structure-property relationships to guide rationale material and device design. The technological viability of biomolecular electronics and ionics is also discussed.

Scaling up genetic circuit design for cellular computing: advances and prospects

Synthetic biology aims to engineer and redesign biological systems for useful real-world applications in biomanufacturing, biosensing and biotherapy following a typical design-build-test cycle. Inspired from computer science and electronics, synthetic gene circuits have been designed to exhibit control over the flow of information in biological systems. Two types are Boolean logic inspired TRUE or FALSE digital logic and graded analog computation. Key principles for gene circuit engineering include modularity, orthogonality, predictability and reliability. Initial circuits in the field were small and hampered by a lack of modular and orthogonal components, however in recent years the library of available parts has increased vastly. New tools for high throughput DNA assembly and characterization have been developed enabling rapid prototyping, systematic in situ characterization, as well as automated design and assembly of circuits. Recently implemented computing paradigms in circuit memory and distributed computing using cell consortia will also be discussed. Finally, we will examine existing challenges in building predictable large-scale circuits including modularity, context dependency and metabolic burden as well as tools and methods used to resolve them. These new trends and techniques have the potential to accelerate design of larger gene circuits and result in an increase in our basic understanding of circuit and host behaviour.

Artificial consciousness and the consciousness-attention dissociation

Artificial Intelligence is at a turning point, with a substantial increase in projects aiming to implement sophisticated forms of human intelligence in machines. This research attempts to model specific forms of intelligence through brute-force search heuristics and also reproduce features of human perception and cognition, including emotions. Such goals have implications for artificial consciousness, with some arguing that it will be achievable once we overcome short-term engineering challenges. We believe, however, that phenomenal consciousness cannot be implemented in machines. This becomes clear when considering emotions and examining the dissociation between consciousness and attention in humans. While we may be able to program ethical behavior based on rules and machine learning, we will never be able to reproduce emotions or empathy by programming such control systems-these will be merely simulations. Arguments in favor of this claim include considerations about evolution, the neuropsychological aspects of emotions, and the dissociation between attention and consciousness found in humans. Ultimately, we are far from achieving artificial consciousness.

Recent advances and opportunities in synthetic logic gates engineering in living cells

Recently, a number of synthetic biologic gates including AND, OR, NOR, NOT, XOR and NAND have been engineered and characterized in a wide range of hosts. The hope in the emerging synthetic biology community is to construct an inventory of well-characterized parts and install distinct gene and circuit behaviours that are externally controllable. Though the field is still growing and major successes are yet to emerge, the payoffs are predicted to be significant. In this review, we highlight specific examples of logic gates engineering with applications towards fundamental understanding of network complexity and generating a novel socially useful applications.