Abstract
Building biological systems that can perform computations has long been an aim of synthetic biology. The potential utility ranges from smart diagnostics and therapeutics, sustainable bioprocessing, and bioremediation/environmental applications. Engineered bacterial communities can serve as distributed biocomputing systems capable of integrating signal information and decision making (eg logic gates, neural networks). Bacterial microcompartments (BMCs) are organelle-like structures in prokaryotes. They are important for the localisation of a myriad of metabolic processes that would normally be toxic to cells. We will expand the toolbox of biocomputing using BMCs for the control of microbial communities.
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