Members of the public will get to see how revolutionary scientists and engineers are proposing to make counters, sensors, calculators and other devices out of living bacteria at this year's Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition.
The researchers from Imperial College London will be manning a stand which will allow exhibition visitors to find out more about the brand new science of 'synthetic biology.' Posters and interactive computer stands will describe how pioneering researchers at Imperial are modifying DNA, which is then put into e-coli bacteria cells, to make living devices that do not exist in the natural world.
Visitors will also have the chance to move Lego 'BioBricks' - representing strands of DNA that instruct a cell to behave in a certain way - around a giant replica e-coli cell that has been chopped in half, mimicking the work of the researchers.
Professor Richard Kitney from Imperial's Department of Bioengineering, one of the senior synthetic biology researchers at the College, explains: "By putting together different 'BioBricks', scientists can create new devices and may in the future be able to build living machines. Synthetic biology is a new and very exciting field. It has an incredible amount of potential to change our daily lives. New materials such as for cars and aircraft, computers, building materials, medicines - so many things could be improved by modifying and recombining DNA."
This new, emerging area of science is in its early stages and is being worked on by a team of 30 engineers and scientists at Imperial. They, and other teams at universities around the world, are producing a catalogue of BioBricks, and have successfully completed 800 so far. The Imperial team has already successfully produced a bacterial oscillator and is working on a bacterial NAND gate - both of which are vital components of a basic computer.