A computer that multiplies itself: bacteria that solve problems in parallel

Every time a bacterium divides, this computer gets faster. A McGill-led team, with partners across Europe, the UK and Australia, has spent 20 years building a biocomputer in which bacteria swim through tiny interconnected channels, each channel network encoding a problem as a map of possible routes. The bacteria explore many routes at once — and because they keep dividing, the machine keeps adding processors. 'With bacterial division, we have 1 million chips working at the same time,' says senior author Dan Nicolau. Published in Microsystems & Nanoengineering, the system uses a small fraction of the memory and resources of an ordinary computer, and suits the problems conventional machines handle worst — like working out how a protein folds.

SDG 9 · Industry, innovation and infrastructure — Mechanism: tech innovation