sudoku
kbonham | November 17, 2010This is just awesome:
A strain of Escherichia coli bacteria can now solve [sudoku] puzzles
[...]
"Because sudoku has simple rules, we felt that maybe bacteria could solve it for us, as long as we designed a circuit for them to follow," says team leader Ryo Taniuchi.
The mechanism is ingenious and yet straightforward at the same time.
Basically, they have 16 different strains of bacteria, with each initial strain representing a spatial coordinate on a 4x4 grid. Each bacterium has a "4C3 leak" system, which is a chunk of DNA that the team designed that has 4 possible outputs. Depending on…