Bacterial Computing

Bacterial computing is a conceptual subset of synthetic biology, which is itself an emerging scientific discipline largely concerned with the engineering of biological systems. The goals of synthetic biology may be loosely partioned into four sets: (1) To better understand the fundamental operation of the biological system being engineered, (2) To extend synthetic chemistry, and create improved systems for the synthesis of molecules, (3) To investigate the “optimization” of existing biological systems for human purposes, (4) To develop and apply rational engineering principles to the design and construction of biological systems. It is on these last two goals that we focus in the current article