Overview

The 20th century is main for Computer Science while the 21st is for Biology. Both the arising of computer and the exploring of life had a great impact and promotion on the whole world. And with the continued increasing development of computer science, the interaction between the real world and the virtual world in the computer is more and more incredible. Hence, we begin to realize that once a real life system is strongly coupled with a virtual one in the computer, we would have created a new life form, mixed-reality cells (MR. Cell). Therefore, a genetic oscillator was built in E. coli as the real part and an e-oscillator was simulated in a computer as the virtual part. The two parts could interact with each other through an interface device composed of microfluidic chip and chemical/optical modulator. At the beginning, the two oscillators work independently in a dual-reality state. With their interaction, they would gradually adjust to each other without human interference to a strongly coupled and synchronized mixed-reality state. A prototype of MR. Cell was demonstrated in this project which has great potential in a wide range of the future biological research.