Overview

Our project aims to create a new kind of life form, mixed-reality cells, which are half-real and half-virtual. What should be mentioned is that mixed reality states occur only when a virtual and a real system are sufficiently similar.(Alfred Hübler, 2013). As two genetic oscillators built-in E.coli are alternative, we also simulate two e-oscillators in computer as virtual part corresponding to the genetic oscillators.

To reach the mixed-reality state, the approach is separated into three stages,the former two of which will be mentioned in modeling part. The first stage is virtual-virtual coupling. We use two e-oscillators of identical characteristics to simulate the mixed-reality process. They would transfer parameters and interact with each other to a coupled or synchronized state. Secondly, LED lamp is adopted to replace the fluorescence of real cell as the physical real part. It will connect with e-oscillator to compose a mixed-reality state of physical. On the other hand, it will show that our interface hardware could work as expected. At last, we wish to achieve our goal, mixed-reality state. The genetic oscillator in E.coli will interact with e-oscillator in a computer through our interface hardware and gradually they would be strongly coupled.