IntraBioNets: Foundational Models of Heterogeneous Intrabody Biomolecular Communication Network Links for the Internet of Bio-NanoThings

Project Description

Over the last decade, the transformative concepts and the ideas in the study of information processing and propagation in the molecular domain have dramatically reshaped the frontiers of communication and networking research, with biomedicine as a natural application domain. The state-of-the-art diagnostics, monitoring, and therapy in clinical settings are limited by the imprecise nature of current methods and the use of devices that are either external, or when implanted, suffer from large size and poor biocompatibility. At the same time, we are at a critical crossroad in biomedical research in which our ability to miniaturize sensors and electronics is unprecedented, and our understanding of biological systems enables novel technologies to interface and manipulate cells and their biochemical realm.

As a result, nanotechnology and synthetic- biology-enabled wearable and implantable devices with ever increasing biocompatibility and operational autonomy are being developed, which promise to pervasively, perpetually, and precisely sense, process, control, and exchange body health parameters in real time, and allow remote interrogation, which we classify under the framework of the Internet of Bio-NanoThings (IoBNT). The IoBNT is envisioned to be a heterogeneous network of electronic and biological devices, communicating through different means, ranging from electromagnetic waves and coupling, electrical and mechanical stimulation, to molecular communication. This framework will enable accurate sensing and control of complex biological dynamics in the human body, and eventually be at the basis of the next-generation biomedical solutions for unsolved clinical problems.

The focus of the IntraBioNets Project will be on the so-called Microbiome-Gut-Brain Axis (MGBA), where electrical signals propagating through the nervous system are converted to molecular signals that influence the gut microbial communities, and vice versa, by means of natural communication links and interfaces present in the nervous system, the endocrine system, and the immune system. The MGBA holistic nature, encompassing electrical and molecular communication domains and interfaces between them, its accessibility from the external environment through the alimentary canal, and the presence of microbial cells in the communication processes at its basis, which are amenable to be programmed as biological devices with current genetic engineering techniques, make this system particularly interesting to explore as the basis to realize an IoBNT communication network infrastructure.