Team:HZAU-China/Project
Mixed-Reality CellBidirectinal coupling between real and virtual bio-oscillators
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.
Background
As we know, computer technology have created great revolution in humans’ lives from 20th century. And now, we enter into 21th century, a century of life science. The developments of computer science and life science both impact profoundly our world and society. And they also develop production of society. We can’t help imagining what will happen if these two combine. We can’t predict what will happen. However, we believe that the combination has great potential, even creates the next revolution.
Review the development history of computer science and life science development, we can find that these two begin combining gradually. Especially in recent years, with the increasing ability of computer simulation, many scientific research can be carried out by means of computer simulation in the virtual world. And this technology has a lot of applications in life science research. For example, man-machine interaction, artificial intelligence and visual simulation environment of medicine research. It is not exaggerated to claim that we have entered into a mix-reality era [1]. So we are thinking why not create a life form half in the reality, half in the virtual world. The real part and virtual part regulate each other constantly eventually mix a mix-reality system.
A researcher ever explored the concept of mix-reality state [2,3]. He set a simple pendulum in the reality, and designed a simulative programs in the computer. These two simple pendulums coupled in the same conditions limited in a numerical range. On the other hand, in the realm of biology, researchers constructed two genetic oscillator circuits in bacterium. These two genetic oscillator circuits coupled based on queuing theory [4]. We were sparked inspiration by these research achievements. We want to achieve the couple between organisms and computers to create a new united life form. We believe such a life form possesses logic of computers and adaption of organisms will make a difference in the future.
MR. Cell
MR. Cell, a half-real and half-virtual life form, is composed of two parts, the real part in E.coli and the virtual part in computer. These two parts interact with each other through our interface hardware and will be coupled to a unified whole, mixed-reality state.
The synchronous interreality system—MR.Cell
At the beginning, the two oscillators, bio-oscillator and e-oscillator, work independently in a dual-reality state. When connected by the interface devices, the two parts begin to interact with each other. The state of bio-oscillator in E.coli cultured in a microfluidic chip would be observed through a fluorescence microscope and transmitted to the computer. The computer would analyze and process the received fluorescent data and adjust the state of e-oscillator through parameter modifications. In the meanwhile, based on its own state, the e-oscillator in computer also could regulate the state of bio-oscillator through LED intensity. The LED is controlled by a single-chip, which is linked to the computer. Following the processing cycle, the two parts interact with each other and couple eventually.
Besides, in consideration of the complexity and difficulty of the system, we take three stages to achieve our final goal, MR.Cell. At the first stage, we simulate two e-oscillators, which are of similar characters but have different initial states. And they couple gradually. Next stage, LED lamp replaces the genetic oscillator in E.coli to interact and couple with the e-oscillator. The last stage, our ultimate ambition, is to complete the MR. Cell, the two part of which synchronize and couple strongly.
Future work
Next step, we won't be satisfied with achieving coupling between bacterium's oscillators and computers. We will focus on the coupling between a metabolic system such as Krebs Cycle (Fig.1) and computer. We are interested in cell differentiation (Fig.2). If we could achieve the coupling between cell differentiation and computer, organisms will have more diversities. And the cell differentiation will get more amazing
We chose to couple oscillators because the synchronization is easy to observe. Not only oscillators but also many states can be coupled. In fact, there is the real-time communication and codetermining next behavior in the couple state. Life complexly couple with itself and the environment, that’s why we need to decouple parts in synthetic biology. In our project, we not only plan to achieve to couple between the E.coli and one computer but also dream to achieve couple with everything. We will try to couple different kinds of organisms with different kinds of computers. And we also plan to test the cascade of couples. At last, it may combine the organisms, inorganic environment and virtual world then achieves all in one.
Reference
1. Bin-Guang Ma, About Mechanics of Virtual Reality, written in 2005, published in: The General Science Journal, (August 25, 2006).
2. V Gintautas and A Hubler, Mixed Reality States in a Bidirectionally Coupled Interreality System.[J]. Phys. Rev. E 75, 057201 (2007)
3. A Hubler and V Gintautas. Experimental evidence for mixed reality states [J]. Complexity, 2011, 13(6):7–10.
4. A Prindle, et al., Rapid and tunable post-translational coupling of genetic circuits. [J]. Nature, 2014, 508(7496):387-391.
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