A hybrid transistor with transcriptionally controlled computation and plasticity

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 15; no. 1; p. 1598
• Main Authors: Gao, Yang, Zhou, Yuchen, Ji, Xudong, Graham, Austin J, Dundas, Christopher M, Miniel Mahfoud, Ismar E, Tibbett, Bailey M, Tan, Benjamin, Partipilo, Gina, Dodabalapur, Ananth, Rivnay, Jonathan, Keitz, Benjamin K
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Nature Publishing Group 21.02.2024; Nature Publishing Group UK; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: Bacteria; Biological computing; Biosensors; Cell Respiration; Controllability; Electricity; Electrochemistry; Electron transfer; Electron Transport; Gene regulation; Logic circuits; Modular design; Modular systems; Plasticity; Synaptic plasticity; Transistors
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-45759-1

Organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) are ideal devices for translating biological signals into electrical readouts and have applications in bioelectronics, biosensing, and neuromorphic computing. Despite their potential, developing programmable and modular methods for living systems to interface with OECTs has proven challenging. Here we describe hybrid OECTs containing the model electroactive bacterium Shewanella oneidensis that enable the transduction of biological computations to electrical responses. Specifically, we fabricated planar p-type OECTs and demonstrated that channel de-doping is driven by extracellular electron transfer (EET) from S. oneidensis. Leveraging this mechanistic understanding and our ability to control EET flux via transcriptional regulation, we used plasmid-based Boolean logic gates to translate biological computation into current changes within the OECT. Finally, we demonstrated EET-driven changes to OECT synaptic plasticity. This work enables fundamental EET studies and OECT-based biosensing and biocomputing systems with genetically controllable and modular design elements.