MIT Researchers Engineered Bacteria as Transistors

The team created living circuit boards where bacterial networks process and route chemical signals.

Updated on Sept. 28, 2026 in Life Sciences

A microscopic view of an engineered bacterial cell array organized in a geometric grid on a translucent surface. — MIT researchers have successfully engineered bacteria to function as transistors, creating biological networks capable of performing logic operations and routing chemical signals. AI Illustration. Upload story photo >

Live Poll

Do you support the use of engineered living bacteria for electronic computing applications?

Researchers at MIT have engineered bacteria that function as transistors within a network of cells. This research-stage effort establishes living circuit boards capable of computing and directing chemical signals.

Why it matters

The development demonstrates a method for biological computation, where cellular networks perform logic operations to regulate signals. This approach highlights a path toward bio-computing systems that manage information using chemical traffic rather than electrical currents.

The system utilizes a network of cells engineered to function as transistors that determine if a chemical signal continues or stops based on intersecting traffic. This architecture allows the cell network to compute and route signals through the biological medium.

The players

Hamid Doosthosseini

An MIT postdoc who conducts research on synthetic biological circuits.

MIT

A research university focused on engineering, physical sciences, and the development of synthetic biological systems.

The details

The researchers engineered bacterial cells to behave as logic components on a printed circuit board. Each cell acts as a biological transistor, a switch that modulates the flow of chemical data. By organizing these cells into a network, the team created a substrate that can combine, compute, or direct signals based on the presence of specific chemical stimuli at intersecting junctions.

2025: Hamid Doosthosseini earned his PhD from MIT.

The Tech Race

This work represents a departure from traditional silicon-based logic toward systems that leverage cellular behavior for computation. It contributes to the broader effort in synthetic biology to replace standard electronic logic gates with biological equivalents.

This technology is currently in the research stage and does not impact existing consumer or industrial workflows. The methodology requires significant further development before it can be applied to practical diagnostics or autonomous biological sensing devices.

The takeaway

The study validates that living cells can be programmed to act as discrete logic components for signal processing. Observers should track future publications from the MIT team regarding the integration of these cellular transistors into larger, multi-stage computational networks.