Starting a synthetic biological intelligence lab from scratch.

Journal: Patterns (New York, N.Y.)
Published Date: May 9, 2025

Abstract

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have led to the development and deployment of gigantic models trained on billions of samples. While training these models consumes enormous energy, the human brain produces similar outputs with dramatically lower data and energy requirements. This has increased interest in synthetic biological intelligence (SBI), which involves training neurons for goal-directed tasks. This multidisciplinary field requires knowledge of tissue engineering, biomaterials, signal processing, computer programming, neuroscience, and AI. As a result, starting SBI research is highly nontrivial and time-consuming, as most labs specialize in either the biological aspects or the computational ones. Here, we propose how a computational lab can become familiar with the biological aspects of SBI and also discuss computational aspects for biological labs that are interested in SBI. We describe general strategies as well as step-by-step processes, risks, and precautions to mitigate delays and minimize costs.

Authors

  • Md Sayed Tanveer
    Department of Biomedical Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180, USA.
  • Dhruvik Patel
    Department of Biomedical Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180, USA.
  • Hunter E Schweiger
    Genomics Institute, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95060, USA.
  • Kwaku Dad Abu-Bonsrah
    Cortical Labs, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
  • Brad Watmuff
    Cortical Labs, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
  • Azin Azadi
    Cortical Labs, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
  • Sergey Pryshchep
    Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180, USA.
  • Karthikeyan Narayanan
    Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180, USA.
  • Christopher Puleo
    Department of Biomedical Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180, USA.
  • Kannathal Natarajan
    The Design Lab at Rensselaer, School of Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180, USA.
  • Mohammed A Mostajo-Radji
    Genomics Institute, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95060, USA; Live Cell Biotechnology Discovery Lab, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95060, USA. Electronic address: mmostajo@ucsc.edu.
  • Brett J Kagan
    Cortical Labs, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
  • Ge Wang
    Biomedical Imaging Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, USA.

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