Pierre Deymier: Building a Computer in a Cell

How can you build a computer in a cell, or a group of cells? Nature did it, and the brain is one result. Engineers who know some biology might also find a way.

At The University of Arizona (UA), Pierre Deymier is giving it a try. In a major breakthrough in bioengineering, he uses tools he finds within living cells, mainly special kinds of proteins, and turns the proteins into hardware. He calls them Proteoware. 'It's my own word,' he says. 'I don't know if it will catch on.'

Coining a word in English was a snap for Deymier (pronounced roughly 'day-MEE-yay', "Close enough," he says). He was born in Carpentras, in southern France, and studied materials science at the University of Montpellier, then received his PhD from M.I.T. Deymier is the director of the recently established School of Sustainable Engineered Systems, which unites the departments of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, Materials Science and Engineering, Mining and Geological Engineering, and Systems and Industrial Engineering. Deymier was associate head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering since 2001.

Much of his work has involved looking at the cell as a remarkable toolbox. He says: 'You can ask, 'What's in there? Oh yes, a protein. What can we make with that?' One interesting tool there is called a microtubule. It's like Lego, except that it assembles itself.'

Microtubules are very small polymers, only 25 nanometers in diameter, but Deymier regards them as extremely versatile nanolevel tools.

Some years ago, he used these tiny strands to make wires only 100 atoms wide in his work as cofounder of the UA's Nanotechnology Interdisciplinary Research Team. He grew the strands on chips, and then filled in the tubes with copper. The protein's coat provided the insulation for the wire. Such wires can be used in microchips as small and efficient circuitry for transistors, cell phones or computers.

Since then, he has moved on to figuring out ways to use living cells as computers. Deymier puts it this way.

The first step is to get to know the proteins. 'First we find out what they do,' he says, 'and then we ask, 'Now, how do we make them do it for us?''

Deymier's research extends beyond the use of proteins as building blocks of nanoscale systems to incorporate to the cell itself. Cells can work together to make circuits that carry signals essential for living organisms.

Call them biosignals, the kind of instructions that, for example, might tell your body to begin making a needed chemical, like insulin. Among the signals are instructions for life itself, like cell division or forming structures.

The ability to engineer cells has been around for decades. When scientists routinely began engineering the genome of bacteria in the 1990s, it wasn't long before engineers like Deymier began asking how they could make things using living cells.

For instance, the emerging field of synthetic biology may enable the design of cells that can function as logic module, that is, essentially switches.

'This is very cool as well,' he says, and explains. Cells, Deymier has observed, can function like switches. Mention switching and engineers think 'computers.'

Using the architecture of living systems with many cells, Deymier has found a way to set up a switch, a kind of filter, by tacking on a short string of cells at a certain point along a longer chain of cells, effectively creating a biological waveguide. It's like a new intersection along a main street.

Then he uses the cell's ability to send signals, with what a physicist would call compositional waves, part of our body's natural electrical system, in a cell. When those waves travel along a strand to the point where they come upon a filter, they can be diverted to another line.

That process is known as demultiplexing. That's exactly what's needed to form a biocomputer, or biocell computer.

And with all that, you have a computer in a cell, and eventually cells in a computer.

Accomplishments

BIO5 member Pierre A. Deymier is a frontiersman of science and engineering. It is at the frontier of materials science and engineering, biology, chemistry, mathematics and physics that he finds inspiration for his research. A pioneer in the field of the materials science and engineering of living matter, he discovers ways to use of proteins as building blocks of engineered materials, he explores the design of systems of cells for information technology applications.the new director of the recently established School of Sustainable Engineered Systems, which unites the departments of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, Materials Science and Engineering, Mining and Geological Engineering, and Systems and Industrial Engineering. Deymier was associate head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering since 2001