BIOCOMPUTERS AND WHAT THEY DO

Specialized microcomputers known as "biological computers" were created with the intention of being applied in the field of medicine.

What is a Biocomputer?

The biological computer is an implantable device primarily used for molecular or cellular tasks like monitoring the body's activity or creating therapeutic effects. This is composed of RNA and DNA and proteins, as well as carrying out basic mathematical calculations.

What are the key benefits?

The key benefit of this technique over similar technologies is that a doctor may use it to pinpoint and treat only damaged or ill cells. Treatment of certain cell types is made possible. The organic computer is also capable of carrying out basic mathematical operations. The researcher are able to create a system or array of biosensors that can locate or target particular cell types that might be present in the patient's body. Also, this might be utilised to execute or carry out target-specific medicinal operations that could supply treatments or procedures for illnesses in accordance with a doctor's orders.

This facilitates healing while also making it simpler. Also, it enables medical professionals to concentrate just on the sick, malignant, or damaged cells in a patient's body without putting additional strain on the patient's healthy and normal cells.

How does it work?

Inside a patient's body, biological computers are created. The patient's body only needs the researchers or doctors to provide it the information it needs or a "blueprint" along which the biological computer will be "made." The human body will begin to construct the "computer" on its own using the body's own cells and natural biological processes once the genetic blueprint has been delivered. Because of current technological limitations, it is not yet possible to read signals generated by cell activity. These cellular signals might, however, be easily recognised, translated, and interpreted with current medical and laboratory equipment by employing a tiny implantable biological computer.

A clinician or researcher may quickly identify all varieties of cellular activity and assess whether a specific activity is hazardous or not using the biological computer and boolean logic equations. Even the activities of mutant genes and all other gene activities detected in cells can be included in the cellular activities that the biological computer could identify. The biological computer functions with an input signal and an output signal, just as conventional computers. The body's proteins, RNA, and other particular molecules that are contained in the human cytoplasm serve as the biological computer's primary inputs. On the other hand, laboratory tools could be used to find the outcome.

What are its applications?

A device called the implantable biological computer may be employed in a variety of medical procedures that call for or necessitate intercellular assessment and treatment. Monitoring intercellular activity, including gene mutation, makes use of it particularly well. The key benefit of this technique over similar technologies is that a doctor may use it to pinpoint and treat only damaged or ill cells. Treatment of certain cell types is made possible.

In the future, RNA-based biocomputers may act as the brains of devices that, among other things, produce biofuels from cells or regulate "smart pharmaceuticals" that act as medications only when particular conditions are met.

The prominent applications of biocomputers are as follows:

Ø  As implantations in artificial limbs:  When implanted into artificial limbs, biocomputers can react to real nerve impulses, making them appear more realistic.

Ø  As heart-heat regulators: They might possibly be utilised as a heart-heat regulator. This will address the issues faced by users of pricey pacemakers.

Ø  As detector of light and sound for blind and deaf: It can also benefit the blind or the deaf. It is possible to construct it so that it can detect light and sound and transform them into electrical impulses. After reaching the brain, these impulses cause the brain to be stimulated by sight and sound

Ø  As military gadgets: It can be customised to meet military requirements.

Ø  As shield during nuclear explosion: It can resist the harmful effects of electromagnetic waves produced by nuclear explosions.

What are its challenges?

A computer that is entirely driven by microbes or DNA is still in the distant future, despite the significant role that biological computing has played and will continue to play in modern medicine. We believe that we are not even close enough to predict the emergence of biological computing in the upcoming years, where DNA will take the role of the CPU. Some of the difficulties we face in replacing silicon chips with DNA in the future include:

Ø  The capacity to manipulate DNA.

Ø  How to enable communication amongst the multiple changed DNAs?

Ø  Is it possible for a bacterium or DNA to malfunction?

Ø  Can it have an effect on health?

The questions raised above might not even be a problem, but they still need to be addressed.

Future of Bio-Computing

It's time to look towards the future and be ready for the next big thing in computers for all those hard-core computer specialists who are devoted to silicon chips. Biological computing has a promising future. This research is already having an impact on several medicinal and commercial items, such as vaccines and insulin (used to treat diabetes). Most of the designs and patterns used by different software firms already exist in nature (DNA), and all we have to do to use DNA efficiently is reverse engineer it, figure out how it works, and adapt it to meet our needs.

Ø  A drone with 64 neurons could have a keen sense of smell.

Next, what? Agabi estimated that a Koniku chip with....

Ø  A computer with one million neurons will be able to think for itself.

Ø  500 neurons can power a driverless car.

Ø  10,000 neurons offer real-time image processing at the level of the human eye.

Ø  100,000 neurons enable robotics with numerous sensory inputs.

Ø  Consider this: a grain of sand-sized portion of brain tissue contains 100,000 neurons.

Although the potential is clear, there will undoubtedly be considerable obstacles in the road. Several efforts have been made to create machines that are inspired by the brain, but this is considerably different from actually employing organic stuff, such as real neurons, for large-scale computation.

As amazing as our technological advancements are, biology is a far more sophisticated technology than anything that has ever been made by man. We only realize how much we have to learn from nature's billions of years of evolution when we work to imitate biological processes.