Week 7 HW: Genetic Circuits Part II: Neuromorphic Circuits

1. IANNs have components that check whether two values are similar in magnitude, as opposed to just checking whether the values are HIGH or LOW. In other words, they can perform analog computations.

2. Here is a sample application for an IANN: Help calm down an allergic reaction to peanuts.

Input: peanut protein, white blood cells

Output: anti-inflammatory signals

Limitations: There might be an allergic reaction happening at a site that’s not near the cell with a genetic circuit, in which case the circuit won’t get triggered.

Due to the threshold function, there might be false positives. This might happen if there were a lot of white blood cells but zero peanut protein. In this case, the genetic circuit woud still fire, which is an undesirable outcome.

The anti-inflammatory signal from the circuit might be slow acting.

The entire genetic circuit runtime might be slower than that of the allergic reaction.