Synthesis of control unit for future biocomputer

Chun-Liang Lin, Ting-Yu Kuo, Wei-Xian Li
2018 Journal of Biological Engineering  
Synthesis of a variety of biological circuits for specific functional purposes has made a tremendous progress in recent years. The ultimate goal of combining molecular biology and engineering is to realize a functional biocomputer. To address this challenge, all previous efforts work toward building up the bio-computer as the ultimate goal. To this aim, there should be a key module, named control unit (CU), to direct a serious of logic or arithmetic operations within the processor. Methods:
more » ... research task develops a bio-CU to work with a bio-ALU, which is realized from the combination of previously developed genetic logic gates to fulfill the kernel function of CPU as those done in the silicon computer. Results: A possible framework of the bio-CPU has demonstrated how to connect a bio-CU with a bio-ALU to conduct a fetch-decode-execute cycle of a macro instruction. It presents not only capability of 4-bit full adder but coordination of related modules in biocomputer. Conclusions: We have demonstrated computer simulation for applications of the genetic circuits in biocomputer construction. It's expected to inspire follow-up study to synthesize potential configurations of the future biocomputer.
doi:10.1186/s13036-018-0109-4 pmid:30127848 pmcid:PMC6092829 fatcat:una5fvcw4bdppf57spxn3ogzcu