Dennis Bray Podcast on Microbes As Computers
Posted on October 13, 2009 Comments (1)
Carl Zimmer interviews Dennis Bray in an interesting podcast:
Dennis Bray is an active professor emeritus in both the Department of Physiology and Department of Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. He studies the behavior of microbes–how they “decide” where to swim, when to divide, and how best to manage the millions of chemical reactions taking place inside their membranes. For Bray, microbes are tiny, living computers, with genes and proteins serving the roles of microprocessors.
Related: E. Coli Individuality – Wetware: A Computer in Every Living Cell by Dennis Bray – Programing Bacteria – Micro-robots to ‘swim’ Through Veins
Posted by curiouscat
Categories: Life Science, Podcast, Science, Students
Tags: bacteria, biology, computer science, Life Science, microbes, podcasts, protein, Research, Science, university research
Categories: Life Science, Podcast, Science, Students
Tags: bacteria, biology, computer science, Life Science, microbes, podcasts, protein, Research, Science, university research
One Response to “Dennis Bray Podcast on Microbes As Computers”
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October 19th, 2009 @ 6:47 am
It’s very interesting how there seems to be an increasing trend towards using living organisms as computing mechanisms. I have been reading more and more stories about storing data in dormant DNA, exploiting micro-organisms for their processing abilities, etc… which is ironic, since several years ago the in thing to do was to replace living things with silicon chips.