Q) What is a biological transistor? What is its application?

Reply:   We all know that Transistor is a three terminal device which is the key component in electronics and in modern day computers. Now-a-days a lot of research is going on in the field of Genetic engineering and the goal of all researches is to develop a biological (or) genetic computers.These genetic computers are the future trends in the field of computing. The basic component of those biological computers is expected to be a biologial transistor (or) Transcriptor (just like transistor in present day computers). Just like the normal transistor, a biological transistor is also a three terminal device and it can amplify the incoming signal. The difference between the normal transistor and the bilological transistor is that the later is not fabricated with silicon or germanium. Instead it is made using specialized enzymes. This is the basic introduction to biological transistor.

What for a biological transistor :-

A biological transistor is used to monitor and control the functioning of a cell present in the body with the help of specialized enzymes. We all know that every change that occurs in the body is only due to the conditions of cells in the body. If you are suffering from fever, it is due to the bad conditions of the cells in the body and in order to condition these cells we consume medicine in the forms of capsule,pills etc. which produce or release the enzymes that can kill the fever causing agents in the body. The ongoing research in the field of genetic engineering and the aim of these biological computers is to identify these kind of undesired changes in cell conditions (like fever) in advance and then repair the spoiled cells on its own by activating the necessary enzymes that kill or nullify the effect of the changing agents (like fever causing agents) without the need of external medication in the form of tablets etc.To achieve these kind of healing process without medication we need a bioligical computer that can store the information related to the cells and process the input conditions of enzymes and act according to the condition to release enzymes that can control the situation. For these kind of biological computers this biological transistor (or) Transcriptor acts as the key component.

How does a biological transistor function:-

        Before entering into the functioning of a biological transistor,we need to know about the basic things that are responsible for the functioning of our body those are DNA and RNA. DNA is a molecule that carry all our genetic information. DNA exists in a double helical structures. It consists of two strands which are combined with the bonds formed by the 4 nucleobase adenine(A),cytosine(C), Guanine (G), Thymine(T) as shown in the figure below.

The behavior of a cell can be estimated by controlling the process called "Transcription" which is carried out by another molecule called RNA. This RNA is produced by an enzyme called "RNA Polymerase(RNAP)". So, if we can control the flow of RNA Polymerase on the strands of DNA we can control the process of transcription and thereby can control the behavior of a cell. This is the basic idea in genetic computing. The structure of biological transistor is shown below.

                  photo credit; extremetech.com

Amplification & Working:-

        In case of normal transistor the input signal is amplified to produce a large output due to thee variation of resistance at input and output. In the same way the biological transistor also takes input from RNAP and small change in the input can be transformed into a large change in the output. We all know that the digital transistors control the flow of electricity,similarly this biological equivalent control the flow of RNAP on the strands of DNA with the help of enzymes (Integrase) that control the flow of RNAP.The operation can be explained clearly using an example. If there is a cancerous cell present in the body then with the help of the biological transistor, we can detect that and without any medication we can trigger the host cell to destruct the cancerous cell or stopping the multiplication process of the cancerous cells. In this manner the genetic computers can give us an ability of self healing without the use medication.

Recent Breakthroughs:-

Researchers had successfully stored some information in DNA and now with the help of this biological transistor several gates(similar to logic gates) were successfully designed and tested. These gates are called Boolean Integrase Logic(BIL)gates. The main aim of the future research is to design a full fledged computer by combining these multiple biological transistors.

Source: www.extremetech.com

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