Biology and modern electronics both transfer and manipulate enormous quantities of information via feedback loops. The profound difference between those feedback loops stems from biology speaking ions while electronics speaks… well… electrons. A major challenge for the 21st century will be establishing true two-way communication between these two worlds. Electronics has already achieved much for listening to biology. While such biosensing is important, without actuation one cannot participate fully in biological feedback loops. We seek a deeper understanding of techniques to translate between the languages of electronics and biology. The field of protonics is the Rosetta Stone we are seeking and we begin with biology’s primary word, the proton. Protonics exchanges electrons for protons using devices analogous to conventional solid state electronics and in so doing can speak to biology in its native language. We have built a protonics interface to cellular networks and are using it to interact with biology. This talk will describe steps to load palladium protodes with protons and actuate cells with that form of communication.

Actuating biology via protonics

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

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