Bacteria computer and fungal snow-clearing maps: inside McGill’s bioengineering lab

So, would you please follow me? It may not look like it, but this tiny little thing I'm holding is a computer. Now, usually computers are using silicon chips and electrons to make calculations, but instead this one uses rubber and bacteria. So this is the research labs of the bioengineering department at McGill. Basically the bacteria are trying to solve a math problem. Here's an analogy. Each bacterium is a person driving in a car, trying to get from point A to point B without using GPS. Just brute force, driving down roads and making turns. That driving is the calculation. And if the bacteria make it to the destination, then the route taken is the solution to the math problem. Depending on what numbers we are playing with, they can turn left or right, and they multiply. Now we start with one or two bacterium. And the larger the problem, we end up with millions. Now, a standard computer could do millions of calculations per second, but it would have to do each calculation one at a time, whereas this biocomputer using bacteria can actually do thousands or millions of calculations at the same time. We grow the bacteria like any other microbiologist would do and we engineer it to have some kind of fluoropore, fluorescence express, which we can see with bright colors on the screen using the microscope. So we see them in bright red spots and they are trying to go through the funnel, which is the entry point, and then into the network. It's basically a giant maze for the bacteria. Correct. And they're trying to find the exits. Correct. So this is where we fabricate stuff. Can you see this lady here? I have to dress you up like that lady. I'd be happy to dress up. Okay, you are the brave man. All right, so let's go in. We've got the lab coat, we've got the hairnet, we've got the shoe covers, ready to go into the clean room. So this is the microfabrication and operation room. We grow bacteria for a while. By the way, all the bacteria that we're using is type 1. They are not contagious or anything, so... Good to know. Researchers here are also doing something called biosimulation. Let me explain. They've basically etched a map of the city on this rubber-like material. So you can see it here. You've got the Mount Royal downtown. And they're going to inject fungi in here. And the fungi is going to work through the map of Montreal. And they're trying to see if they can come up with a more efficient way of clearing snow in Montreal's city streets. Simulating an actual problem. A human problem. A real world problem. A real world problem. So that's a clear application for the fungi, but what about the bacteria computer? Well, the researchers say it could be used for encryption, molecular biology, and artificial intelligence, while being more energy efficient than a typical computer. Per operation, we are one million way cheaper than the electronic computers. We are going full speed into using artificial intelligence that's using at least ten times more. energy than normal computation that we are playing with. So we are heading to an energy nightmare. So each type of problem requires a different approach. And this is where I think that we may contribute.