Digital circuits now in living cells

                                     In a paper published by University of Washington in  Nature Communications dated 25 My, 2017 the scientists of Synthetic biology explained building of NOR logic gate in the living cell of Yeast, analogous to NOR gate in electronic circuits. NOR gate receives two inputs and pass a single positive output when both signals are negative. This gate has been built by using a synthetic gene consisting of three DNA strings, incorporated in chromosomal DNA, two acting as inputs and third one as output.

Researchers used CRISPER-Case9 technology in their work. Case9 protein behaves as a gatekeeper and it controls opening and closing of of particular gate, a DNA sequence.
This system cannot be compared with electronic circuits in speed, accuracy and information processing but they hope that cell may respond to diseases and outer environment in more efficient way.
                      In the past similar efforts have been tried and largely been successful but this one is the largest of all. We can anticipate if similar work continued soon we will be reprogram the living cells and enabling their better  response to lethal diseases like cancer.