Biotechnology is an exciting area within Biology that is opening up vast new possibilities for advancements in the living standard of human kind, through improved food production, environmental management and even medicine. One of the newest and most interesting advances occurred at the California Institute of Technologies (Caltech) Chemistry and Chemical Engineering division where two scientists improved a way to manufacture RNA computers within cells. RNA computing is a system that uses ribonucleic acid to create a response within a cell when a particular effector molecule is present. Previously, it has only been on a very simple scale with one molecule producing a basic response within a living cell.
The Caltech scientists, Win and Smolke, improved construction methods and where able to assemble a more complex RNA computer attached to ribosomes within yeast cells. These more complicated RNA devices can function as logic gates, very similar to those within electronics. These logic gates can receive one signal in the form of a molecule and then instruct the cell to produce a different output molecule. What makes these RNA computers more complex then in previous experiments is they can use two separate chemicals to produce an output. The yeast cells needed to be exposed to both theophylline and tetracycline for the RNA computer to activate and create a response in the form of florescence.
This experiment has in theory shown that RNA computers could allow for rapid responses to changes within cells which could be used for a host of benefits. Some of these benefits bioengineer Adam Arkin from Berkeley University described in cosmos 'These circuits could control the synthesis of commodity chemical or pharmaceuticals or even aid microbes fixing nitrogen for plants or acting as therapy for humans'.
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Links
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/2258/full http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2008/October/20100802.asp http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/322/5900/456
