Biomedical engineers teach bacteria to count

[anon]

Biomedical engineers at Boston University have taught bacteria how to count. Professor James J. Collins and colleagues have wired a new sequence of genes that allow the microbes to count discrete events, opening the door for a host of potential applications, which could include drug delivery and sensing environmental hazards.

"This was probably the major application still to be addressed within synthetic biology: Can you count discrete events?" said Collins, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and a Boston University William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor. "And now we've come up with two different designs to do this."

Biomedical engineers teach bacteria to count

[nextor]

Pretty sick thing to do. I don't really understand what to use it for and how reliable it really is. What if they count wrong or smth...