A Biochemical “NAND” Gate and Assorted Circuits

Abstract

The study of metabolic cascades is often associated with the notion of ‘switches’, that is, mechanisms that can exist in one of two defined states, usually called ‘ON’ and ‘OFF’. A number of workers have become interested in the possibility of designing digital and neural-like circuits based on the metabolic cascade^1–3. In this short paper I would like to describe some metabolic digital ‘devices’ based on the cascade cycle. One of the most basic components in digital electronics is the NAND gate. This gate is important because almost any other logical device can be constructed from it; for example, NOR gates, clocks and flip-flops are easily built using particular configurations of NAND gates⁴. What follows will be a description of a basic metabolic NAND gate, a NOT gate, a novel metabolic ‘clock’ based around the NOT gate and a metabolic flip-flop.