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SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY

Logic invades cell-free biosensing

Nature Chemical Biology volume 18, pages 356–358 (2022)Cite this article

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Cell-free biosensing is emerging as an effective and low-cost technology, but interpretation and synthesis of the results remains largely manual. Now, researchers have incorporated a new information-processing layer between biosensors and their outputs using logic gates to integrate complex results.

Logic gates are the fundamental core of computation, the building blocks that enable processing in all computers. These individually simple operations can be chained together to produce complex circuits capable of a huge range of processes. As the field of synthetic biology continues to advance, there has been increasing interest in using DNA-based logic gates1 in cell-free systems to merge their computational capacity with biosensing2. Now, researchers have combined the computational power of logic gates, in a new modular manner, with small-molecule gene circuit biosensors to provide programmable logic functions and a novel take on analog-to-digital conversion3.

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Fig. 1: Information processing layer between biosensor and output.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Evan Amalfitano & Keith Pardee

  2. Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Keith Pardee

Authors
  1. Evan Amalfitano
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  2. Keith Pardee
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Correspondence to Keith Pardee.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Amalfitano, E., Pardee, K. Logic invades cell-free biosensing. Nat Chem Biol 18, 356–358 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41589-021-00963-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41589-021-00963-8

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