Chemical circuits for the body?

The human body can be considered to be a miracle by itself – just take any cell, and break it down to the minutest detail, and you would see the wonder of it all. Well, if you want to call the body a computer, then we might as well go along this line of thought just for this story. After all, our bodies do have their own chemical “highways” that send and receive information and instructions, and when you make parallel comparisons with an electrical circuit, you would realize that the two do have plenty of similarities. After all, logical functions do get their time of the day, while additional signals are sent back and forth.

In the context of an electrical circuit, electrons will perform all the signalling work, while silicon transistors form the logic framework within the circuit itself. A chemical circuit will then rely on charge-carrying molecules instead of electrons for signaling, while charged biomolecules are the “transistors” that perform all the relevant logic work. How about using acetylcholine to design a circuit in our bodies one day? This is the stuff that is used to signal muscles to perform, and if one could offer superior control of the human body through a chemical circuit, it would definitely be Nobel Prize material.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Medical