Living bacteria can perform complex nonlinear calculations by using their own growth cycles as a biological computer.
April 23, 2026
Original Paper
What Makes a Bacterial Model a Good Reservoir Computer? Predicting Performance from Separability and Similarity
arXiv · 2604.19850
The Takeaway
Common bacteria act as a physical reservoir for processing data. Metabolic dynamics allow these organisms to solve mathematical tasks that usually require silicon chips. Most people assume computation requires electronic circuits, but this proves that basic cellular life can process inputs and produce predictable outputs. This biological hardware could eventually lead to living sensors that calculate and react to environmental toxins in real time.
From the abstract
Biological systems are promising substrates for computation because they naturally process environmental information through complex internal dynamics. In this study, we investigate whether bacterial metabolic models can act as physical reservoirs and whether their computational performance can be predicted from dynamical properties linked to separability and similarity. We simulated the growth dynamics of five bacterial species, one yeast species, and 29 Escherichia coli single-gene deletion mu