Overview

Since the rising up of Computer Science, the life style and society conditions of human have a huge leap. Till now, the computer has gradually been in plenty of fields of life. At the same time, the development of Biology Science turns to be amazing as well. Biology is believed to bring another marvel of the world. And with the rapid development of the computer as well as biology, the connection between them is more and more close, like the processing of biological data through computer, the simulation of life in computer and even the man-machine interface. It seems that there is inclined to make them be one. Thus, we wonder what would happen if we combine the life in the real world with the computer-simulated life in the virtual world. Could it be regarded as a new life form which is half-real and half-virtual?

Meanwhile, Virtual-reality is known as a way to be in the virtual world, like GoogleGlass, HoloLens and xbox. However, no matter how cool they may look like, the core is just the sense like your sight that would communicate with the virtual world. The degree that you feel being involved in the virtual is too shallow with only part of the reality. Therefore, we intend to create a new method that a whole real life system would connect with a whole virtual life system. That's Mixed-reality cells. And then we put forward a whole design to make it come true.

Based on above targets, we chose oscillator, a typical biological process, to present life form. And then 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.

To reach our goals step by step, our project is divided into three phases, virtual-virtual coupling, Mixed-reality in physics and Mixed-reality. Till now, phase 1 that two e-oscillators gradually coupled with each other and phase 2 that e-oscillator coupled with a physical oscillator presented by the light intensity changes of LED have all been achieved. What's more, we designed several experiments to test the parts we used, including a hybrid promoter and our Light Controlling system, which have revealed that these parts can work well. And also, the prototype of MR. Cell was demonstrated in this project which has great potential in a wide range of the future biological research.