Synthetic Biology can be described as the use of engineering principles to build useful devices from biological building blocks or make existing biological systems more effective and efficient. One can take this definition further to include the complete design and construction of artificial organisms. This proposal aims to harness the power of synthetic biology at the cellular level by exploiting bacteria, yeast and mammalian cells to carry out device like functions. Moreover this exploitation will allow the cells/bacteria to be "simplified" so that the input/output (I/O) requirements of device integration can be addressed. Motile function will be achieved by engineering muscle cells to have the minimal cellular machinery required for excitation/contraction coupling and contractile function, which will be powered by mitochondrial conversion of glucose to ATP, an energetic currency in biological cells. This will be carried out at a larger scale by interfacing multiple cellular\/bacterial devices together, connecting to an electronic brain and in effect creating a multi-cellular biohybrid robot.
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