Electronic Genes Could Transform Medical Technology

20 January 2017 Thanks to electronic genes, we could soon be plugging bacteria into devices When it comes to technology, a bug is a rarely welcomed intruder that can cause untold problems to a device. But, thanks to the work of a group of United States-based researchers, that’s all about to change. A team of synthetic biologists, eager to uncover new ways to connected organisms to electronics, have developed a method to control bacterial genes. One result of this experiment is that we are – hypothetically – one step closer to creating ‘living components’ for our electronic devices. Why is this important? Well, William Bentley of the University of Maryland believes that they would be particularly valuable for devices that work inside the human body. “If you want to discover what’s going on in the gastrointestinal tract or the oral cavity, if you can connect to electronics you have a way of interpreting what’s going on and you may be able to manipulate it,” he said. One such example of how this might work in practice is that a device could use an organism inside the body to detect certain chemicals produced by harmful bacteria. When it recognises the chemical, it could secrete an antibiotic to protect the patient.

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