The planarian is nobody's idea of a genius. A flatworm shaped like a comma, it can be found wriggling through the muck of lakes and ponds worldwide. Its pin-size head has a microscopic structure that ...

Genetic circuits control the activity of genes and thereby the function of cells and organisms. Scientists have shown how various genetic circuits in bacterial cells are influenced by growth ...

Genetic engineers can design and assemble sophisticated gene circuits to program cells with new functions, but important signaling molecules can become diluted as these cells grow and divide, causing ...

Cells in nature have to respond to environmental stimuli with a complex repertoire of responses. In effect, they make computations that require processing that is both analog, like adjusting to a ...

Like modern-day high performance machines, cells are constantly monitoring signals in their environment in order to “decide” on a course of action such as growth or movement. The signals are ...

Synthetic biology researchers have demonstrated a new method for digital information processing in living cells, analogous to the logic gates used in electric circuits. The circuits are the largest ...

(Nanowerk News) Researchers at Turku Centre for Biotechnology have invented new tools for decoding and controlling signalling circuits in living cells with flashes of light (Nature Communications, "A ...

In the last 150 years, engineers have developed and mastered ways to stabilize dynamic systems, without lag or overshoot, using what's known as control theory. Now, a team of University of Arizona ...

The orientation of a line at a given position in visual space is represented by a small volume of primary visual cortex, known as an orientation column. Although cells within such a column share some ...

Over the past half-century, scientists have shaved silicon films down to just a wisp of atoms in pursuit of smaller, faster electronics. For the next set of breakthroughs, though, they’ll need novel ...