From the Voigt Lab site: "We are developing a basis by which cells can be programmed like robots to perform complex, coordinated tasks." (Image by Dr. Edwin P. Ewing, Jr. )

At Dailytech, Jason Mick has a smart article about scientists using E. Coli bacteria in the place of electriconic currents to operate microcomputers, which is the first time living organisms have been utilized in this way. An excerpt:

“In a newly published study in the journal Nature, Christopher A. Voigt, PhD, and his colleagues at the University of California San Francisco, demonstrated how intercellular communications between genetically modified E. Coli bacteria could act as a crude computer.

The result is that bacteria can be enslaved to become part of a hive mind computer, performing the will of a central controller. Professor Voigt describes, ‘We think of electronic currents as doing computation, but any substrate can act like a computer, including gears, pipes of water, and cells.  Here, we’ve taken a colony of bacteria that are receiving two chemical signals from their neighbors, and have created the same logic gates that form the basis of silicon computing.’

Professor Voigt’s team is currently working towards building a bacteria computer capable of accepting commands in a formal language system, similar to how modern computers receive commands in assembly (translated to machine) language.”