Question: So, Dave told me scientists have made a biological transistor, but can this transistor (seeing as it is living and has the potential to grow) forge like a sort of logical pathway ? Also seeing as ithe human brain only uses about 1% conciously at a time, could this transistor be made to use 100% at a time seeing as it doesnt have to concentrate on functions such as breathing and bodily function?

David Christensen answered on 14 Nov 2013:

Right, so this thing the scientists called a biological transistor was something designed to allow measurement of things going on within a cell to give scientists information. Basically what it is, is a way to control and amplify what genes are turned on in response to different signals sensed by a cell. I’m not sure I understand it all, but they have managed to program these to use Boolean Logic if you know anything about that stuff – if not, it’s the system of logic where you set up rules such that something is done if certain criteria are met (including instructions AND, OR, NOT, etc). The hope of this stuff is that you could make cells in peoples bodies detect disease themselves and then give a signal to say there is disease.

As well as these kinds of logical amplification pathways, computers need memory and DNA is actually a really good memory storage system. This means that it might be possible to use these biological transistors to make observations inside the cell and then record the information in new DNA. But, this is all designed so that the biological transistor is just reacting to inputs in the cell – like changes in the amount of sugar the cell has around it. I’m not sure that it could be used for more complex computing problems.

I’m not sure that that is actually true about the amount of brain that is active. I think that is a common mistake that scientists think is wrong and that we actually use most of our brains all the time, although it isn’t conscious. As the biological transistor is inside living cells and these cells need energy to survive, probably a lot of the information recorded from the transistor would be relatively dull and relate to simple functions of breaking down nutrients to produce energy and replacing proteins that had broken down.

Maybe another of the scientists has understood this biological transistor better than me and can help. I find it all very confusing and to be honest don’t know very much about how computers work either!