COAL-​​MINE CANARIES ON A CHIP

“Hundreds of sub­ways rid­ers and sta­dium spec­ta­tors may one day owe their lives to the death of a sin­gle cell,” Erik Baard writes in today’s Wired News.

Engineers at the University of California at Berkeley have merged a liv­ing cell with an elec­tri­cal cir­cuit so that in a chem­i­cal attack the cell’s death would trip an alarm.
The bionic chip, made by Boris Rubinsky and Yong Huang, updates the 19th-​​century coal min­ers’ trick of bring­ing canaries down into shafts. When the del­i­cate birds died from inhal­ing poi­so­nous gases, the work­ers knew to evac­u­ate.
The Berkeley bionic chip works by gaug­ing the elec­tri­cal resis­tance of a cell mem­brane. In the cell’s death throes, that resis­tance spikes, and then plum­mets.
“Most cur­rent secu­rity sys­tems work by detect­ing spe­cific pathogens and tox­ins, so if an attacker uses a more exotic agent, it could slip by unno­ticed,” Rubinsky wrote in an e-​​mail. “Our sys­tem will detect any­thing that has the abil­ity to kill a cell — even when not expected.” 

June 13th, 2003 | Chem-Bio | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.