Their findings, published in Nature Communications<\/a>, describe a method that could eventually allow cells to diagnose disease and respond automatically inside the body.<\/p>\n Latest Videos From Traditional genetic circuits function somewhat like a tall building, where each additional instruction requires another layer of internal computation to operate correctly.<\/p>\n As these systems grow more complex, their performance and reliability tend to decline rather quickly under real conditions.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n They combined this process with both natural and artificially engineered regulatory elements to build molecular tools resembling biological processors.<\/p>\n Dr. Nissim explained that the new method allows cells to run complex programs using far fewer calculations and genetic building blocks than before.<\/p>\n This reduction, he said, makes it possible to construct more advanced biological programs without sacrificing functional accuracy or consistency.<\/p>\n “Our new approach allows cells to carry out complex programs using far fewer calculations and genetic building blocks,” said Dr. Nissim.<\/p>\n What to read next<\/p>\n “This makes it possible to build much more advanced biological programs without losing functionality.”<\/p>\n To demonstrate the system, researchers built a biological “full adder,” a three-bit device capable of simple binary math similar to a computer processor.<\/p>\n They also created a biological multiplexer, a component that selects one signal from multiple options and forwards it onward.<\/p>\n Fluorescent proteins glowing in different colours allowed the team to track how these signals moved through each engineered cell in real time.<\/p>\n Toward programmable cell therapies<\/p>\n The system also includes a built-in safety mechanism that activates when a cell detects an invalid or overloaded genetic configuration internally.<\/p>\n This produces a distinct warning signal, which researchers say could eventually help prevent errors during real medical treatments.<\/p>\n As a practical demonstration, the team programmed cells to produce Interleukin\u201415, an immune protein known to activate cancer-fighting immune cells more effectively.<\/p>\n In theory, similarly programmed cells could monitor for several disease markers at once before releasing treatment only when needed.<\/p>\n Such precision could allow future therapies to target diseased tissue directly while limiting harm to surrounding healthy cells nearby.<\/p>\n By lowering the genetic material and energy required for cellular decision-making, the researchers have created a notably flexible toolkit for future work.<\/p>\n Whether this approach can scale reliably from laboratory demonstrations to actual clinical treatments remains an open and unresolved question.<\/p>\n Still, the underlying logic suggests medicine may increasingly resemble software design, with biological code directing cells on precisely when and how to act.<\/p>\n \n Follow TechRadar on Google News<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0add us as a preferred source<\/a>\u00a0to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Human cells processed multiple biological signals using fewer genetic instructions simultaneouslyRNA trans-splicing allowed cells to execute complex computational…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61,60,80],"class_list":["post-534214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.techradar.com\/media\/img\/techradar_logo_v2.svg\"){kind=logo}
A new approach to genetic computation<\/p>\n![\"Google](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/diM9tpwF2Lz85R8q85CT78.jpg\")
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