Remember how Jay Keasling said, “ Don’t be surprised if one day your computer has biological parts “? Well, researchers aren’t there yet, but they’re getting closer, as John Timmer details over at Ars Technica :
The new method takes a protein from a virus that infects bacteria and cuts it in two, making a pair of genes (A and B) that each produce part of the mature protein. The two parts then act as a biological version of an AND logic gate, with output (in the form of protein activity) present only when both A and B interact. When either or both A and B are missing, the output is off.