Reprogramming nature

Summer is not without its annoyances -- mosquitos, wasps, and ants, to name a few. As the cool breeze of September pushes us back to work, labs across the country are reconvening tackling nature's hardest problems. Sometimes forces that seem diametrically opposed come together in beautiful ways, like robotics infused into living organisms. This past summer, researchers at Harvard and Arizona State University collaborated on successfully turning living E. Coli bacteria into a cellular robot, called a "ribocomputer." By taking archived footage of movies, the Harvard scientists were able to successfully store the digital content on the bacteria that is most famous for making Chipotle customers violently ill.