Team:Tsinghua

With the development of modern technology, the computer has become an essential tool in people’s daily life. At the beginning of the 21st century, the biological computer was introduced. In recent studies, people have established different logical pathways such as "and", "or" and "xor (Exclusive or) " in prokaryote cells and mammalian cells. However, we discover that these pathways can only function in single cells. But we also find that these implementations are limited in one cell, which in fact greatly suppress the ability of application in which we require high-throughout, large scale, super-fast delivery and processing of information.  We want to design a biofilm-based E.chip that will allow signal transmission and processing among E.coli bacterial colonies. The rapid proliferation of bacteria and their large number will help us realize the idea of cloud computation through biological computers.

Firstly, we will construct an information transmission module.

In a traditional cell-cell communication system, the signal is determined by the presence of signal molecules. The problem with this system is that it can only support a small number of cells and the information we can transmit with it is very limited. In modern communication systems, signals are transmitted through microwaves, which have a higher capacity and are easier to process. Therefore, we want E.coli to generated a signal wave, to fulfill our needs for information transmission.

Then, a parallel information transduction system should be built. We plan to let signal travel in the fashion of waves-the waves of concentration of some molecules. And the parallel system is based on this consideration. By using multiple signaling systems together, we could let signals travel and function independently, thus making . At present, we use several kinds of quorum sensing systems to approach out goal.

And now we put Escherichia coli carrying with multiple signal transduction pathways onto a chip which we call it E.chip. Although signal travels independently, we cross link their back-end to produce wanted calculation. And the process is shown below in the animation.