ArticleCommunications of the ACM2024
Biocomputation: Moving Beyond Turing with Living Cellular Computers.
Article in Communications of the ACM, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- DNA-Based Boolean Logic Gates for Molecular Computation and Biosensing: A Critical Review.Molecular biotechnology · 2026Review
- Growth control as a central regulator for tuning the cellular context.Journal of biological engineering · 2026Article
- Dynamics of genetic circuits in Pseudomonas protegens.Cell systems · 2026Article
- Exploring the computing power of microbes that shapes the environment.Current opinion in microbiology · 2026Review
- Parameter Evolvability in Gene Expression Models Drives Phenotypic Adaptation.ALIFE : proceedings of the artificial life conference. International Conference on Artificial Life · 2025Article
- Why cellular computations challenge our design principles.Seminars in cell & developmental biology · 2025Review
- Standardized Quorum Sensing Tools for Gram-Negative Bacteria.ACS synthetic biology · 2025Article
- Genetic designs for stochastic and probabilistic biocomputing.Physical review. E · 2025Article
- Open problems in synthetic multicellularity.NPJ systems biology and applications · 2024Article
- Synthetic Ecosystems: From the Test Tube to the Biosphere.ACS synthetic biology · 2024Review
- Turing patterns with cellular computers.Cell systems · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The design and implementation of new-to-nature living systems with human-defined computing capabilities is now a routine process. Cells, such as bacteria, can be rationally modified to respond to a set of inputs and deliver outputs based on algorithmic rules that have been synthetically encoded into their genomes; and the resulting cellular computers are used in various domains, ranging from medical to environmental. With the era of synthetic biology, the last 20 years have seen tremendous advancements in molecular biology and microbiology, allowing us to engineer living systems with unprecedented precision. But while combinatorial functions are currently the main focus of programming living cells, biological systems have so much more to offer. It is now the time to explore, characterize, and exploit the full computing power of living systems. How do they handle stateful computations? What classes of problems can they solve? What is the complexity of gene regulation and evolution as problem-solving processes? These (non-trivial) questions, and many more, demand more attention from the computer science community. This article advocates for leveraging the synergies between theoretical computer science and synthetic biology to create more powerful cellular computers and move beyond conventional Turing computation. The limits of what can be computed with synthetic biological systems are still being explored.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.