This Computer Is Alive: What Is Bio Computing?

800,000 living brain cells, grown in a dish, learned to play Pong in about 5 minutes — and nobody programmed them. Welcome to bio computing: computers built from the materials of life. In this video: • Why your 20-watt brain outclasses a 20-megawatt supercomputer on efficiency • How Leonard Adleman solved a maths puzzle in a test tube in 1994 • How scientists program bacteria to behave like logic gates • Brain organoids on electrode chips, and the first biological computer you can buy • The hard problems: lifespan, speed, consistency and ethics ⏱ CHAPTERS 00:00 Brain cells that learned to play Pong 00:19 What is a computer, really? 00:55 The 20-watt brain vs a 20-megawatt supercomputer 01:25 The three branches of bio computing 01:40 DNA computing: a puzzle solved in a test tube 02:43 Living circuits: programming bacteria 03:30 Living neurons: brain organoids on a chip 04:36 Why it's not in your phone (yet) 05:17 The future: silicon + biology 05:42 Recap: what is bio computing? 📚 SOURCES & FURTHER READING • Kagan et al. (2022). "In vitro neurons learn and exhibit sentience when embodied in a simulated game-world." Neuron. (DishBrain / Pong) • Cortical Labs: CL1 biological computer announcement (March 2025). • Jordan et al. (2024). "Open and remotely accessible Neuroplatform for research in wetware computing." Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence. (FinalSpark) • Adleman, L. M. (1994). "Molecular computation of solutions to combinatorial problems." Science. • Erlich & Zielinski (2017). "DNA Fountain enables a robust and efficient storage architecture." Science. • Gardner, Cantor & Collins (2000). "Construction of a genetic toggle switch in Escherichia coli." Nature. • Elowitz & Leibler (2000). "A synthetic oscillatory network of transcriptional regulators." Nature. (the repressilator) • Smirnova et al. (2023). "Organoid intelligence (OI): the new frontier in biocomputing and intelligence-in-a-dish." Frontiers in Science. • TOP500 list: power draw of the Frontier supercomputer (~21 MW). Note: "200 million gigabytes per gram" is a theoretical maximum for DNA storage. The brain-vs-supercomputer comparison is about power draw, not a like-for-like measure of computing ability. #BioComputing #Science #FutureTech