Scientists Create Model For A Functional Living Bio-Supercomputer

In science fiction, you’ve probably seen computers that use organic elements, but the characters in the book often use vague or made-up words to explain how they work. Well, researchers from two continents, four countries, and ten years of intense work has resulted in the creation of a model of a supercomputer that can run on the same substances that living things use to power their own bodies: Adenosine triphosphate (ATP).

ATP transports chemical energy within cells for metabolism. It is one of the end products of photophosphorylation, aerobic respiration, and fermentation and used by enzymes and structural proteins in many cellular processes, including biosynthetic reactions, motility, and cell division. Get it? Nah, didn’t think so.

To explain it easier: a typical person generates and uses close to their own body weight in ATP per day. Nutrition doesn’t really play a huge role in it since the body constantly recycles ADP and the free phosphate back into ATP. Where nutrition does come in is that the body is able to use carbohydrates, proteins and lipids in various interlocking pathways in order to gain the energy needed for this recycling. Oxygen also plays a role since the mitochondria (the organelles responsible for ATP production) are several times more efficient when working aerobically than anaerobically.

Since the body uses ATP to provide energy to our cells to allow you to move around, lift things up, take a jog, and get in an argument online. It’s pretty impressive that the biological computer model created by the crew at McGill team, led by the Chair of the Department of Bioengineering Professor Dan Nicolau, also relies on ATP for power.

How it works is that the supercomputer can process information very quickly and it operates using networks similar to those massive supercomputers you hear about on the news sometimes. The difference is that this biological supercomputer is a lot smaller in size, and it functions by using proteins that’re present in all living cells. The bio-computer is similar to that of the busy functions of a large city. Cities include big and small objects like subways, cars, buses, people, pets, ect. that all move around the city at all times in various direction and speeds. All of these things operate to navigate from A to B to C. This is basically how the bio-computer works. The proteins travel around in an ordered fashion (not quite like this because traffic jams suck), and their movements in the bio-computer will be powered by ATP.

The size of the model chip is a square of 1.5 cm. Another thing it does that differentiates itself from other supercomputers is that it barely heats up. This can lead to new supercomputers that could only be the size of a regular book on you shelf instead of having an entire gymnasium-sized supercomputer that takes up a massive amount of power and space to operate. If you want to think of it simpler: think of a computer in 1950 versus your laptop. Now picture your laptop being even more powerful without the fan having to turn on periodically to cool it down… but a million times more complex, obviously.

Hopefully we’ll get to use these types of computers in our daily lives instead of just reading about technical advances like this that seem a bit too far into the future. Let’s also hope that it doesn’t transform into that big blob thing from AKIRA.

(Via Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

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Jeff Sorensen is an author, writer and occasional comedian living in Detroit, Michigan. You can look for more of his work on The Huffington Post,UPROXX,BGR and by just looking up his name.

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