It’s a programming question nearly as old as the inspiration itself: “Can it run Doom?”
Released over 30 years ago, the seminal first-person shooter (FPS) is a touchstone classic of video gaming—not only for its influence on the medium, but for inspiring some pretty wild coding schemes. In 1997, Doom’s creators at iD Software released the game’s original source code for free online, allowing legions of hobbyists the ability to tinker and experiment to their demonslaying heart’s content.
[Related: Using ‘Doom’ to design a room.]
Since then, enthusiasts have hacked an ever-expanding list of devices to play the pixelated sci-fi horror adventure. From pregnancy tests, to tractors, to ATMs, to calculators—if it’s got at least some circuitry in it, chances are that, with a little ingenuity, it can run Doom.
…And now, “circuitry” apparently extends to gut biome bacteria.
Lauren “Ren” Ramlan, an MIT biotechnology PhD student researcher, recently released a paper documenting a truly stomach-churning feat: As highlighted by RockPaperShotgun, she programmed Doom to run on a display made from E. coli cells.
“To run Doom, all one needs is a screen and willpower,” Ramlan writes. “… Ultimately, this begs the question of how biological systems might be engineered to host this classic millennial FPS.”
According to Ramlan, for the project to work, E. coli cells must function as traditional pixels capable of being either “on” or “off.” They also need to collectively light up to form images like a computer monitor or TV screen. To make that happen, Ramlan first grew cells within a 32×48 1-bit well plate, then connected the makeshift screen to a controller capable of processing and translating binary code into the “addition or omission of a repressor controlling the fluorescence of the cells.” Basically, Ramlan swapped a traditional…
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