Mating Human Cells With Circuitry

casper911 writes, "Looks like the making of a real $6 Million Dollar Man may not be so far-fetched. The University of California in Berkeley has found a way to mate human cells with circuitry." That's it: Screw wearables. I want the hardware wired right in.

As long as I don't have to

get a tattoo reading

This human includes bionic chips developed by the University of California, Berkeley and its contributors.

Just kidding gang :-)

Re:Interesting implications

) Probably the most interesting implications would involve improved learning abilities. It would be really interesting to have the capability to link a kind of mental hard drive into someone. This would be sort of like Neo in The Matrix when he plugs himself into a computer, and several seconds later wakes up saying, ``I know Kung-Fu!''

I'm not sure its quite that easy. Lets say you do download 'Kung-Fu'. You still don't have the agility, strength, or anything else to actually do 'Kung-Fu'. Your muscles 'remeber' how far they have been streched, and become accustomed to certain repeated movements. The reason it worked for Neo is that he didn't have to train his muscles (though they did regrow/train them to some extent). I guess you would have to program your entire body.

Now in the case of other knowledge, its entirely possible that one might d/l all of mathematics and not understand any of it. Your brain might simply not have the interconects that need to grow in order to think about a given subject. Similarly, one could d/l all of human history, be able to give names and dates and places of interest, but not be able to reason about those, thus missing the analysis that someone who understands history could make. I don't know how you could download understanding short of instructing the growth of interconects in the brain.

--locust

Original Press Release

I've checked the original press elease [berkeley.edu] from UC berkeley. It seems to be about putting a cell on a chip and controlling its membrane potential (voltage) with electronic circuits. It probably has nothing to do with cybernetic control or neural implants (yet). The following are quotes from the press release:

"UC Berkeley's bionic chip took three years to build using silicon microfabrication technology. It is transparent, so it can be studied by microscope, and measures about one hundredth of an inch across. The much tinier cell, which measures about 20 microns across, or one thousandth of an inch, is not visible to the naked eye. It sits in a hole in the center of the chip and is kept alive with an infusion of nutrients."

"Cell membranes allow certain materials in and keep others out depending on the needs of the cell. The bionic chip can open and close a cell membrane in milliseconds, allowing for a very precise control never before possible. Once in place in the circuit, the cells themselves are considered bionic since they can be operated in this way by computer control."

Before you get the hardware 'wired right in' ....

make sure you get a really good firewall .... the last thing you want to do is wake up some morning in some foreign country in a pool of vomit missing a kidney because some script kiddy got root and went on a joy ride, or you find yourself falling asleep on the freeway because the guy you just cut off is mounting a DOS attack ....

This doesn't have to be Human cells you know!

It seems to me that this technology could become a great building block for nanotech development.

For example; take a plain old bacteria or yeast cell that has been genetically modified to produce a particular protean structure or carbon chain. When placed in solution with other cells producing matching 'components' you can possibly create self-assembling nanostructures of various types if the different parts happen to meet up correctly. This is great, except you have no way to turn the thing on or off and must count on chance to get the results you want -- until now!

With this technology you could line up the cells in the order assembly should occur (right, a microbial assembly line) and then activate them in turn while using some method of moving the resulting 'components' to the next 'assembly station' as they are created. To move the parts, perhaps a similar method of electronic control could be applied to cilia?

Anyway, this could be a major cool advance -- health care and neural-cyber connection benefits aside...

Jack

Another call

I've called for this before in many forums and with a loud voice, I'll repeat the call here since its relevant.

I am looking for any surgeon to implant a digital watch face into my left forearm. I will gladly be your guinea pig or keep your identity completely secret if you're afraid you'll do your license. Hell, I'll even provide my own anisthetic...

oh, and I wanna webcast the operation, but you can cover your face if you wish.

Please, there's got to be a black market surgeon around here someplace!

Esperandi
Would black market surgeons and mad scientists read Slashdot? I certainly think so.

Micro-Electroporation

Interested /.'s may want to check out Micro-Electroporation: Improving the efficiency and Understanding of Electrical Permeabilization of Cells [www.wkap.nl], Which is the authors' actual paper as published in Biomedical Microdevices.

Upgrading

Brings new meaning to the term "painful upgrade" I just hope that the turnaround time on this hardware will be better than six months. "Hey its my birthday, guess I should upgrade my Brainium III"

Interesting implications

This has interesting implications. Sure, if they got it right they could turn people into Borg. But there are more agreeable things which could be done.

1) Telepathy. Your brain links to an encrypted radio link, sort of like mental wireless Ethernet.

2) Direct computer-human interfaces. People could control their computers, fly airplanes, and perform other tasks merely by thinking of them. Obviously, this would still require training.

3) Mental HUD displays. A user could allocate a portion of his visual space to a visual computer display.

4) Probably the most interesting implications would involve improved learning abilities. It would be really interesting to have the capability to link a kind of mental hard drive into someone. This would be sort of like Neo in The Matrix when he plugs himself into a computer, and several seconds later wakes up saying, ``I know Kung-Fu!''

Obviously, any kind of interface like this would probably require a lot of training. If people are able to allocate part of their visual field to a display, they have to be able to turn it on and off, and that would require training if the interface is to be truely transparent.

I don't think we're anywhere near this point yet, though. Give science a few years and we might start seeing very interesting applications of hardware-wetware interfaces.