Synthetic Biology: Programming Living Bacteria - Christopher Voigt

For synthetic biologists to engineer cells that can make complex chemicals or perform complex functions, they must be able to tell the cell which genes to turn on and at what time. To do this they build genetic circuits composed of a series of gates that respond to a specific input with a specific output. Voigt’s lab has developed a library of gates that can be interconnected, will function robustly and will not interfere with each other. In addition, they have developed software that lets users arrange the gates to form a circuit of their choice. The software provides DNA sequence encoding the circuit and the DNA can be synthesized and inserted into a cell. Voigt’s lab has successfully built and tested circuits in many cell types to make many products.

Speaker Biography:
Chris Voigt obtained his Bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan and his PhD in biochemistry and biophysics from the California Institute of Technology. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley and his first faculty position was at the University of California, San Francisco. In 2011, he joined the Department of Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an associate professor. His lab is developing a programming language for cells to allow the regulation of complex cellular functions and their application to problems in biotechnology.

[shaimasharif]

Hands down one of the best explanations of synthetic biology I've ever seen.

[yourfutureself]

The most ambitious crossover event in history.

[juancarlosabad]

has this stuff has been gone unnoticed from the mass media??...i am EE engineer and i am speechless.... i have programmed CPLDs with VHDL, equivalent to Verilog and understand all the EE stuff, much less all the DNA/RNA etc on which i have a basic understanding wish i could have participated in such me it is an historical moment....it is like hearing the angels in the creation collaborating with the Almighty Creator on how to create everything living that for the pure evolutionist but for me this is one of the best probes that we cannot be the product of random collision of matter but of intentional design!

[sriharsha]

please continue doing such videos, thank you for sharing your knowledge with us, It is helpful for people in Developing countries

[dorinpopa]

I am in Computer Sciences now but now I want to learn biology and genetics as well.

[muhammadrezahaghiri]

at 16:51, connecting in series! That's amazing. That can help us make memory blocks on living cells!

[MunifTheGreat]

This got me soo interested when I saw this in my biology class.

[devinslurry]

This is really next level stuff. I am super impressed at how far this has come. Are you worried about how this might be used in a negative way?

[EDUARDO]

I will never see a burrito the same ever again.

[djalitanaful]

science and computer technology intertwined.

[anonviewerciv]

Gated response. (10:45, 18:45)
Be interesting to apply this to a bioreactor, ensuring programmable production processes.

[MisterDan]

Well, that was amazing!! Fast forward three more years and... blown away!

[stephenfaris]

Great for research and progress in medicine and many other fields.

[alsavery]

Wait, so you can only have up to 16 NOR gates? Whereas the Apollo program needs 5600 NOR gates. That's a huge difference. We're still a long way off. Maybe if there's a way to isolate the cells from each other so that each gate won't interfere with the others.

[ztzregz]

I wonder thats why we have all those wired multi resistant and super aggressive bacteria, viruses and fungi.

[MuscleTeamOfficial]

I want to learn more about this field, I am fascinated w/ these limits of understanding and pushing the boundaries through novel approaches such as these. Programmer over here who also enjoys quantum *dynamics, and biology/genetics. Just as how we lay down metals for creating our gates, and the techniques and challenges that arise as our feature lengths reduce, I find it more important being able to understand how dna and rna 'code' build amino acids and the proteins/enzyme building blocks, their *dynamics, and their ... done typing....

[harisundar]

This is what Ginkgo Bioworks does. I wanna work there someday.

[underwater_ai]

(I'm a robots programmer) Can somebody please be so kind and tell me the thing I don't quite understand: For example I need bacteria to swim North if there's electrical current in the environment and swim South if there isn't. How will this signal reach DNA sequence and then reach flagellum and control bacterial movement and orientation in the Earth's magnetic field?

[JeeJeeBeats]

bacteries usually oscllates beetween wich Hertz or micro-hertz or Khz ??? I mean the green colored oscillating "walls" ??

[ribamarsantarosa]

19:00 16 non-interfering gates / sets of promoters and repressors - use interference gates and it becomes a biological quantum computer :)