A Synthetic Genetic Reversible Feynman Gate in a Single E.coli Cell and its Application in Bacterial to Mammalian Cell Information Transfer

Abstract

Reversible computing is a nonconventional form of computing where the inputs and outputs are mapped in a unique one-to-one fashion. Reversible logic gates in single living cells have not been demonstrated. Here, we created a synthetic genetic reversible Feynman gate in a single E.coli cell. The inputs were extracellular chemicals, IPTG and aTc and the outputs were two fluorescence proteins EGFP and E2-Crimson. We developed a simple mathematical model and simulation to capture the essential features of the genetic Feynman gate and experimentally demonstrated that the behavior of the circuit was ultrasensitive and predictive. We showed an application by creating an intercellular Feynman gate, where input information from bacteria was computed and transferred to HeLa cells through shRNAs delivery and the output signals were observed as silencing of native AKT1 and CTNNB1 genes in HeLa cells. Given that one-to-one input-output mapping, such reversible genetic systems might have applications in diagnostics and sensing, where compositions of multiple input chemicals could be estimated from the outputs.