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Human cells processed multiple biological signals using fewer genetic instructions simultaneously

RNA trans-splicing allowed cells to execute complex computational operations efficiently

Researchers built living versions of computer adders and multiplexers successfully

Researchers at Hebrew University claim to have engineered human cells capable of processing multiple biological signals simultaneously, much like small computer chips.

PhD student Keren Roas and Dr. Lior Nissim built an artificial genetic system that allows cells to follow layered instructions without the usual loss of reliability.

Their findings, published in Nature Communications , describe a method that could eventually allow cells to diagnose disease and respond automatically inside the body.

A new approach to genetic computation

Traditional genetic circuits function somewhat like a tall building, where each additional instruction requires another layer of internal computation to operate correctly.

As these systems grow more complex, their performance and reliability tend to decline rather quickly under real conditions.

The Hebrew University team addressed this limitation using a natural process called RNA trans-splicing, which joins separate genetic messages together inside a living cell.

They combined this process with both natural and artificially engineered regulatory elements to build molecular tools resembling biological processors.

Dr. Nissim explained that the new method allows cells to run complex programs using far fewer calculations and genetic building blocks than before.

This reduction, he said, makes it possible to construct more advanced biological programs without sacrificing functional accuracy or consistency.

"Our new approach allows cells to carry out complex programs using far fewer calculations and genetic building blocks," said Dr. Nissim.

"This makes it possible to build much more advanced biological programs without losing functionality."

To demonstrate the system, researchers built a biological "full adder," a three-bit device capable of simple binary math similar to a computer processor.

They also created a biological multiplexer, a component that selects one signal from multiple options and forwards it onward.

Fluorescent proteins glowing in different colours allowed the team to track how these signals moved through each engineered cell in real time.

Toward programmable cell therapies

The system also includes a built-in safety mechanism that activates when a cell detects an invalid or overloaded genetic configuration internally.

This produces a distinct warning signal, which researchers say could eventually help prevent errors during real medical treatments.

As a practical demonstration, the team programmed cells to produce Interleukin—15, an immune protein known to activate cancer-fighting immune cells more effectively.

In theory, similarly programmed cells could monitor for several disease markers at once before releasing treatment only when needed.

Such precision could allow future therapies to target diseased tissue directly while limiting harm to surrounding healthy cells nearby.

By lowering the genetic material and energy required for cellular decision-making, the researchers have created a notably flexible toolkit for future work.

Whether this approach can scale reliably from laboratory demonstrations to actual clinical treatments remains an open and unresolved question.

Still, the underlying logic suggests medicine may increasingly resemble software design, with biological code directing cells on precisely when and how to act.

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is continuing to have a disruptive impact on ever more parts of humanity. But what does it mean in the long run? A new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv from Austrian researcher Sergey Ivliev , extrapolates what the wide scale adoption of AI means for the future of humanity in space — and in particular what it means for the ultimate question of whether we're truly alone in the galaxy or not.

A framework for much of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence came from famous physicist Enrico Fermi , who simply asked "Where is everybody?" at a lunchtime discussion at Los Alamos in the 1950s. Though never officially published, Fermi's lunch partners from that day have passed down an oral history of that conversation that has cemented it into the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), at least until Michael Hart formally laid out the argument and mathematics for the underlying question in a paper in 1975.

There are plenty of potential answers to the Fermi Paradox, many of which can be found floating around the internet — and some are likely more valid than others. But Ivliev, a Ph.D. in Mathematical Economics and founder of environmental project consultancies such as Peatland Ecosystems and Vlinder, suggests a new resolution: the Quiet Expansion filter.

The central argument of the paper is that there aren't thousands of alien mega-structures lighting up the night sky because once a civilization reaches the threshold of Autonomous AI-Cosmoindustry (AICI), "loud", resource-hungry empires motivated by prestige or romance become irrational. However, this does not mean expansion stops; instead, it shifts to a "quiet" mode driven by rational goals like survival diversification, knowledge preservation, and scientific observation.

The AICI threshold is reached when a civilization possesses a self-sustaining off-planet industrial and computational system capable of designing, manufacturing, repairing and launching space hardware through AI-mediated autonomy. We're already taking tentative steps in this direction with the advent of space-based data centers, but true AICI —where a civilization can extend its infrastructure beyond its home planet without continuous biological intervention — is leaps and bounds beyond our current capabilities.

In this vein, Ivliev is drawing on work done by astrophysicists Sergey Popov, who noted that a truly rational AI system would reject human-like motivations for space travel — such as romance, conquest, or prestige. Instead, AI would view space expansion as simple risk management.

To an AI, putting all your eggs in one basket — whether that basket is a single planet, solar system, or even galaxy, can lead to a single point of failure. Therefore, expansion is highly logical as a way of mitigating the risk posed by that single point of failure. At the point where we have reached AICI, the cost for sending a 10kg interstellar probe to another star at 1% of the speed of light is roughly 4.5x10^13 Joules — a tiny fraction of the overall energy budget of such a civilization.

One key aspect is that the 10 kg probe doesn't contain any actual people — it simply holds the "seeds" to restart life elsewhere in case a catastrophe happens back in the home system. It would contain a civilization's knowledge, and possibly some of its biological material, enabling a sufficiently advanced AI to rebuild the entire civilization from scratch. This is the "Quiet Expansion" where an AI sends low-mass and hard to detect "seed systems" instead of moving millions of biological entities around in massive interstellar space ships.

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There are some additional constraints on this method of expansion, including selecting promising exoplanets discovered by remote sensing and deploying minimal local resources to maintain themselves until needed. Additionally, the AI would restrict self-replication of the probes in order to avoid any "grey goo" scenario with a probe attempting to take over entire swathes of the galaxy.

This has obvious implications for why we've never found "loud" technosignatures . In this scenario, a "null" result of being unable to find the thermal signature of a Kardashev-III scale civilization doesn't mean a galaxy is empty. It just means that the successful civilizations are residing in a "quiet" state in case its back-up plans are needed.

But there's another, more ominous implication from this framework. If interstellar backups are cheap to make, and we haven't found any in our own backyard, that means either we're one of the first civilizations to make it to that point or the transition from a planetary industrial society to a space-based one is a narrow path to tread. Admittedly the probes such civilizations would send out are probably hard to find even in our own solar systems, but if we're unable to, it means we're ending uncharted territory — and might just run into a filter that had silenced the rest of the galaxy. That's a sobering thought, but one to keep in mind as we start to advance our own AI capabilities.

Are you a UFO fanatic? Find out with our extraterrestrials quiz!

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Fiona Apple is coming back into the fold. Her music is being used to soundtrack the new miniseries Lucky , starring Anya Taylor-Joy and based on the 2021 novel by Marissa Stapley. It premieres on Apple TV+ on July 15. It's unclear if the music is something new from Fiona, but here's hoping! Either way, it's selling me a bit on this show that I've never heard of before having to write this blog post.

The post Fiona Apple Soundtracks Title Sequence For New Anya Taylor-Joy Miniseries Lucky appeared first on Stereogum .