Daniel Pascal (VOIGT LAB)

Remote Electrogenetic Induction of Engineered Therapeutic Bacteria

Engineered bacteria can operate inside the human body to have a therapeutic effect on their host. Maintaining control over cellular behavior in vivo is dependent on the ability to remotely signal to the engineered cells. Electronic interfaces represent a means of externally transmitting these signals into the body. To accomplish this, we harness metal electrodes to control bacterial gene expression and deliver therapeutic peptides to the gut. We engineered an inducible split recombinase that is electrochemically regulated. This work drastically expands upon the contexts in which engineered cells can be deployed to treat pathogenic diseases in the body.

Jessica Sun (VOIGT LAB)

From Silicon to Cells: Engineering Bacteria for Distributed Computing

Communicating cells can be engineered to perform powerful distributed computing. We demonstrate that cellular distributed computing is feasible by implementing a hash function across 65 cells. However, we find that it is difficult to engineer accurate signals for correct computation. Here, we use modeling and simulation techniques to predict signal propagation between cells and identify experimental methods to achieve the correct output. This work demonstrates the need for accurate predictions to expand the computational capacity of cells.