Exploring the intersection between biology and engineering
What if researchers could understand how cells grow, adapt and behave using the same tools engineers use to design circuits?
A new tutorial bridges the gap between biology and engineering to unlock novel insights and inspire innovation in biotechnology, health, and environmental science.
Life itself can be considered a technology that has evolved over billions of years. The researchers propose that cellular processes and microorganisms that play critical roles in everything from disease response to digestion function in ways similar to engineered systems.
Professors Christian Euler, Matthew Scott and PhD student Mohammed Zim developed the tutorial based on a synthesis of significant, well-established research.
“You can have very interesting technical, almost like engineering-driven understandings of living systems, and those living systems can teach you something about engineering as well,” Euler says.
The tutorial takes an interdisciplinary approach, utilizing a mathematical framework rooted in engineering to generate predictions about microbial physiology, growth and behaviour.
It offers new insights into how biological systems function in ways that can be understood and analyzed using tools traditionally reserved for engineering.
The tutorial is aimed at aiding researchers' transition to new fields, bridging knowledge gaps for collaborators, and supporting the education and development of Ph.D. students in the study of microbial growth and physiology.
Professor Christian Euler
The tutorial uses an example of how microorganisms work at the cellular level. Cells grow using biochemical pathways that transform food into biomass, which is material that comes from living things that can be used as an energy source.
Materials flow through these pathways, closely resembling the flow of electrical currents through circuits. Electrical circuits have components such as resistors and capacitors that control current, while microbial cells have enzymes to catalyze biochemical reactions.
“If we understand microbial physiology in this way, that means that we can use tools from engineering to understand how microbes function. For example, I’m studying a particular kind of regulation, and as it turns out, it might be like a transistor in an electrical circuit. There's a theory and framework for understanding those things that already exist,” Euler says.
The tutorial uses two fundamental “laws” based on engineering models of electrical circuits to make assumptions about microbial physiology.
The flow of material through the metabolic pathways of a cell, nutrients, proteins or other biochemical substances, can be compared to the flow of electrons through a wire.
“The tutorial demonstrates that the constraints are mathematically and conceptually equivalent to Kirchhoff's circuit laws and Ohm’s law. Consequently, bacterial growth physiology can be approached with the same quantitative rigour as electrical circuit analysis,” Euler says.
These two engineering laws enable the flux of material going through microbial networks to be mapped just as electrical current would be in electrical circuits.
In contrast to electronic circuits, living things reproduce, and some part of the “wiring diagram” of life must be devoted to reproducing.
A simplifying principle in the analysis of these biological wiring diagrams is that of “balanced growth,” in which network flows are balanced according to the requirements of biomass production, leading to the exponential accumulation of cells.
This understanding aids researchers who study cell growth or are attempting to harness microorganisms as catalysts for waste conversion, knowing that the same engineering principles that govern the behaviour of electrical circuits can be applied to microbial physiology.
“The tutorial is useful for introducing biological concepts to engineering students. It also serves to introduce engineering concepts to biology students, and hopefully, we can find some synergy in the middle,” Euler says.
The was recently published in Physical Review Journals, PRX Life.