If the stories of autonomous robots and advanced AI haven’t totally gotten you to build a fallout shelter yet, then programmable biological machines might. MIT engineers have developed biological computational circuits capable of both remembering and responding to sequential input data. Nathaniel Roquet’s team at MIT’s Synthetic Biology Group were able to implement within a living cell what’s known as a state machine, according to Vice: Motherboard.

Background: a state machine is a mathematical model that describes a machine which its internal states are matched with a machine input to create a new state. The process would manipulate DNA in a way that would “rewire” the behavior of a cell (in this case E. Coli) in a manner similar to a computer.

This is part of a growing field of synthetic biology, where living cells used as computers can be used to program complex biological functions. In effect, to engineer life. And as if to rub in that they have more than enough engineers, a separate MIT team have created a programming language that allows them to rapidly design complex, DNA-encoded circuits that give new functions to living cells. “It is literally a programming language for bacteria,” says Christopher Voigt, an MIT professor of biological engineering. “You use a text-based language, just like you’re programing a computer. Then you take that text and you compile it and it turns it into a DNA sequence that you put into the cell, and the circuit runs inside the cell.” for those excited by the potential this has as the next frontier of biotech, then these studies are definitely worth the read. For those seeing killer programmable Venus flytraps, back to driverless cars for you.