Researchers Genetically Modify Living Cells to Compute Like Electronic Circuitry

The reason I post this news in this section, is because its implications potentially stretch beyond that of the area of medicine. That's one of the wonders of discovery. How about organical machines being able to repair itself, replicate itself and being self-reliant. Might be a stretch, but who could possibly know? The ideas should flow freely.

Roboticists have put a lot of time and effort into creating machines that function like living things, but what about living things that function like computers? Synthetic biologists at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden have taken a rather large step in that direction by creating genetically modified cells that communicate with each other as though they were electronic circuits.

It (...) could lead to some very cool applications; biological cells could be programmed to monitor our bodies for signs of particular toxins or illnesses, and artificial networks could be created that could perform tasks at very tiny scales in industry, medicine, and science.

Source: Read more here

This is indeed a very interesting step in our technological process. I imagine that if ET's indeed use technology as we know it it is through these means. Quasi biological mechanical beings. We are closer to being a type I civ afterall.

I recall one of the original recruiters I dealt with when first enlisting in the Navy, an ET within the nuclear community, mentioning the use of bacteria as high-fidelity amplifiers. Google is not giving me much on this - but this would have been back in 2005-2006. I think it's an area that's been being worked on for some time.

Aside from the obvious medical applications, surely we could create spray on networks with this tech?

That would be kinda neat to see