This is scientific American's 60 second science. I'm Christopher Intalyata. Got a minute?

Our smartphones, tablets, laptops, they all compute things electronically.

But think outside that silicon box for a second.

There's nothing special about electrons and using silicon as part of computing.

Chris Voight, a bioengineer at MIT. You can do computing. Chris Voight, a bioengineer at MIT.

You can do computing with any number of things.

Including, he says, DNA.

Cells do computing all the time, so they're constantly trying to interpret their environment and be able

to turn on different genes and respond to it.

And those genes in a cellular circuit they're like the logic gates, the memory, and other systems found in conventional

computers.

So Voidin his colleagues created what he calls the first human-made programming language

for living cells. It's an open source design

environment called cell. You just write what you want the cell to do and

cello spits out the DNA sequence as if you were compiling code. The

researchers used the platform to design 60 genetic circuits,

which they then ran inside E. coli bacteria.

And many of these DNA-based circuits allow bacteria

to sense environmental data, like the levels of oxygen or glucose in the gut, and respond in various ways.

They detail the findings in the journal Science.

Not all the circuits worked as intended. A quarter of them failed and some were toxic to the cells.

But the idea here is to make cellular circuit design easier and more approachable to creative people.

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