Programmed bacteria made to self organize to produce a working sensor

By Credit: Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIAID, NIH [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

This is the kind of technology which people would claim is science fiction. In fact this is tin foil hat technology because if someone were to say bacteria could be programmed to make sensors people have been taught to think it's a conspiracy theory or the person has been watching too many movies. Technology today however is strange and a new article has announced that bacteria can now be programmed to produce a functioning sensor.

A quote from the article:

"We're demonstrating one way of fabricating a 3-D structure based entirely on the principal of self-organization," said Stefan Zauscher, the Sternberg Family Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science at Duke. "That 3-D structure is then used as a scaffold to generate a device with well-defined physical properties. This approach is inspired by nature, and because nature doesn't do this on its own, we've manipulated nature to do it for us."

In this instance they chose to produce a pressure sensor as a mere proof of concept but there does not seem to be a limit to what kind of sensors could be produced with enough knowledge and in time. This could have some very positive use cases if these sensors could be used in medicine or for saving lives in some way. Of course there is the dark side to this in that these sorts of sensors could be abused in some way. What do you think about this? Is it a promising breakthrough?

References

Duke University. (2017, October 9). Bacteria self-organize to build working sensors: Bacteria with synthetic gene circuit self-assemble to build working device with gold nanoparticles. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 9, 2017 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171009123210.htm