From the Community: How fresh are your bananas? An exploration of functionality in biological computing – Jake Beal’s Next Step

by Jake Beal

A recent conversation got me thinking about how to explain quantification of “function” in biological circuits.  This is a critical issue and one of the key inhibitors to engineering complex biological systems, but it’s not easy to explain because it involves a lot of technical electrical engineering / computer science concepts like signal-to-noise ratio, input/output transfer curves, non-linear amplification and threshold matching.  I think, however, that there may be nice biological metaphor that can make this concept easier to understand.You see, a biological computing device is like a banana.

For the full post see Jake Beal’s Next Step: http://jakebeal.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/how-fresh-are-your-bananas-exploration.html