The Technology

Moore's Law, stating that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles around every two years, has held up since his initial publication in 1965. Smaller chips provide lower cost and higher speed or processing power. As chips become ever smaller, new techniques for miniaturizing complex circuits must evolve. In the near future, circuits etched on silicon chips will reach their physical limits. Researchers at the University of Tennessee have developed a way to harness the computing power of living cells to create cellular transcriptional logic circuits. By genetically engineering cells to respond to a stimulus and linking those cells to external energetic or chemical stimuli via nanofibers, they have developed a novel way to miniaturize circuits. An "in-vivo" cellular logic device includes a substrate and a structure for providing a stimulus to a plurality of discrete portions of the substrate.  At least one whole cell is disposed on the substrate, the cell having at least one transcriptional unit, the transcriptional unit comprising a gene and a promoter.  Upon application of a stimulus to the promoter, a gene product is expressed.  A detector is provided to detect the presence of the gene product, the gene product preferably conferring a bioluminescent output.

Benefits

-Allows for a new approach to integrated circuit miniaturization

-Potential to greatly increase processing power

Applications

-Cell-to-cell communication circuits

-Chip-to-cell communication circuits

Patents

-Issued U.S. patent 7,020,560

Ref # PD00023