Can Cells Learn?
Maker Faire Bay Area 2017
MAKER
Wallace Marshall
Wallace Marshall is an electrical engineer who studies cell biology with the goal of learning how living things solve engineering problems. He's always looking for new ways to combine his hobby of electronics with his profession of biology.
Can cells learn? To answer this question, we made an Arduino-controlled device to test the ability of giant single-celled pond organisms named Stentor to learn and habituate to mechanical input.
What inspired you to make this project?:
I've always been interested in robots and pond organisms, and once I got the idea in my head that the single celled organisms that live in ponds ARE robots, just ones made of living material, I could not let this idea go. after building some machines to test computation and learning by cells, it seemed that this would be a great way to get people from the DIY and engineering worlds interested in biology, and that Maker Faire would be an ideal place to reach such individuals.
