November 27-28, 2007Pamela Abshire Old solutions to modern problems Natural systems have been evolving for a long time –Millions of years of evolution creates many solutions to a problem and lets them compete to find the best ones –Good engineering solutions Biological systems can solve many of the engineering problems we want to solve –In many cases, these natural solutions are very good Performance near fundamental physical limits Very power efficient Very resource efficient –In other cases, we can make natural solutions better Cells can be engineered/connected to respond to desired targets in different ways

November 27-28, 2007Pamela Abshire But we must face biological complexity We can do lots of things with one cell … –Poke it –Replace nucleus –Move it around –Apply stimuli But cells live and operate in complex environments! –Other cells –Spatial gradients –Modifications to environment (active)

November 27-28, 2007Pamela Abshire Grand Challenge: Increasing N Most existing instruments measure either single cells sequentially and slowly or many cells in aggregate To realize the scientific promise, technologies and techniques are needed to handle many cells simultaneously –Coordinate –Control –Monitor By taking advantage of something akin to Moore’s law for biology it is possible to create the technological and scientific basis for studying complex cellular interactions that form the basis for much of biology

November 27-28, 2007Pamela Abshire Olfactory Sensing –Monitor electrical activity of olfactory receptor cells Pathogen Detection –Monitor cells in real time –Correlate signatures across time & pathways for low false positive detection Biomedical Applications –Nanoparticle toxicity screening –Medical microbots for cancer diagnosis / therapy Cell-based biochemical detection

November 27-28, 2007Pamela Abshire Grand Challenge: Efficiency Biological systems often operate at theoretical performance limits under extreme resource constraints Performance can be increased by devoting more resources (such as size, power, cost, time) –The ultimate challenge is to increase performance while minimizing resources Biology does this well! Lessons to be learned … –Fabrication: Most engineered systems are extremely resource intensive. –Low power operation: Lots of progress made, more to come. –Adaptation/feedback: Ubiquitous in biology, allows performance despite uncertainties/changes in system, environment, task

November 27-28, 2007Pamela Abshire Nature’s nearly optimal signal photons optics biochemical cascade photons conductance membrane impedance voltage membrane channels current + + photon shot noise + rhodopsin thermal noise + membrane thermal noise stochastic channel noise