Overview of the Cambridge iGEM2008 project

Since the emergence of Synthetic Biology, bacteria have been engineered to perform a wide variety of simple tasks. They can be made to express proteins, respond to their environment and communicate primitively with each other. A key goal for the field is to create a communicating, organised and differentiated population of bacteria that could be capable of performing even more specialised tasks. The Cambridge project took inspiration from the brain, one the most complex biological structures known, and one which self-assembles from a very simple starting point. 
Development of the brain requires the combination of chemical systems that play a role in self-organisation and connectivity, and electrical signalling that is required for rapid communication and feedback. The Cambridge iGEM2008 project aim to provide the first tools for combined electrical and chemical signalling for engineering multi-cellular interactions and spontaneous spatial patterning - iBRAIN: integrated Bacterial Recombinant Artificial Intelligence Network (http://2008.igem.org/Team:Cambridge).