Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research and Fischell Department of Bioengineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA.
Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, 21228, USA.
Adv Healthc Mater. 2017 Dec;6(24). doi: 10.1002/adhm.201700789. Epub 2017 Oct 18.
Biology and electronics are both expert at for accessing, analyzing, and responding to information. Biology uses ions, small molecules, and macromolecules to receive, analyze, store, and transmit information, whereas electronic devices receive input in the form of electromagnetic radiation, process the information using electrons, and then transmit output as electromagnetic waves. Generating the capabilities to connect biology-electronic modalities offers exciting opportunities to shape the future of biosensors, point-of-care medicine, and wearable/implantable devices. Redox reactions offer unique opportunities for bio-device communication that spans the molecular modalities of biology and electrical modality of devices. Here, an approach to search for redox information through an interactive electrochemical probing that is analogous to sonar is adopted. The capabilities of this approach to access global chemical information as well as information of specific redox-active chemical entities are illustrated using recent examples. An example of the use of synthetic biology to recognize external molecular information, process this information through intracellular signal transduction pathways, and generate output responses that can be detected by electrical modalities is also provided. Finally, exciting results in the use of redox reactions to actuate biology are provided to illustrate that synthetic biology offers the potential to guide biological response through electrical cues.
生物学和电子学都擅长于获取、分析和响应信息。生物学使用离子、小分子和生物大分子来接收、分析、存储和传输信息，而电子设备则以电磁辐射的形式接收输入，使用电子处理信息，然后以电磁波的形式传输输出。生成连接生物-电子模态的能力为生物传感器、即时医疗和可穿戴/可植入设备的未来提供了令人兴奋的机会。氧化还原反应为生物设备通信提供了独特的机会，跨越了生物学的分子模态和设备的电气模态。在这里，采用了一种类似于声纳的交互式电化学探测方法来搜索氧化还原信息。最近的例子说明了这种方法获取全局化学信息以及特定氧化还原活性化学实体信息的能力。还提供了一个使用合成生物学来识别外部分子信息、通过细胞内信号转导途径处理信息以及生成可以通过电气模态检测到的输出响应的例子。最后，提供了氧化还原反应在激活生物学方面的令人兴奋的结果，以说明合成生物学提供了通过电信号引导生物反应的潜力。
