Living bacteria have been incorporated into an electronic circuit to produce a sensitive humidity gauge.

The gold nanoparticles-plated “cellborg” is “essentially a first step towards a biological computer, and would have many applications,” says Ravi Saraf, a chemist from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

Saraf speculates that similar devices could one day be made that take greater advantage of living organisms, perhaps even using bacteria’s energy systems to power electrical devices.