Ambient computing: Any form of technology that embeds computation into affordances of build or natural environment.
Amino acids: Basic building blocks of proteins.
Biocomputing: The use of biological systems and processes as computational substrates, offering alternatives to traditional silicon-based computing.
Computational onboarding: The process of integrating biological entities into computational networks.
CRISPR-cas9: Gene editing technology based on mechanisms used by bacteria to repair or change their DNA
DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid): A molecule that carries genetic instructions for development and functioning in living organisms, capable of storing and processing information.
DNA polymerase: An enzyme that reads DNA strands and creates new copies during DNA replication.
Fytostat: A plant-based system that regulates environmental conditions like temperature and humidity.
Flubber: 1997 comedy movie starring Robin Williams featuring a sentient green goo.
Harvard architecture: A computer architecture design that physically separates storage for instructions and data. See also “Von Neumann architecture”.
In-storage processing: A computing paradigm where data processing occurs in the storage medium itself, rather than requiring transfer to a separate processing unit.
Internet of plants: A network of plant-based sensors and regulatory systems that can communicate and process environmental information.
Logical gates: Fundamental units of computation, irrespective of their physical substrate. They can be understood as Boolean functions, i.e. mathematical operations with variables that have binary values (0, 1). An example of such operation is NOT gate, which transforms input with value 0 into output with value 1, and vice versa. By combining two NOT gates, you can assemble a NOR gate: a logical negation of OR function. It transforms any combination of two input values into output with value 0, unless the input values are both 0 (then the output is 1). Similarly, you can make gates that represent logical conjunction (AND gate), disjunction (OR gate), and so on.
Nucleotides: Organic molecules that form the basis of RNA and DNA
Organoids: Lab-grown structures resembling mature animal organs cultivated from pluripotent stem cells
Organoid intelligence (OI): The capability of cerebral organoids to learn and solve problems, also referred to as "intelligence-in-a-dish"
Pluripotent stem cells: Cells capable of differentiation into different types of tissue or somatic cells, usually extracted from embryos or generated from mature somatic cells
Proteins: Organic molecules made out of the chain(s) of amino acids
Ribosome: A part of cell nucleus where DNA is stored
RNA (Ribonucleic acid): A single-stranded molecule that acts as an intermediary, transferring information from DNA to other parts of cells.
RNA polymerase: An enzyme that produces RNA copies of DNA sequences.
Soup computing (souper-computing): A hat tip to the legacy of wetware terminologies that emphasises porous, liquid, andÏ fundamentally open nature of biocomputing
Synthetic biology: The design and construction of new biological parts, devices, and systems, or the redesign of existing natural biological systems for useful purposes.
Transcriptors: Biological equivalents of transistors, based on input-output biochemical regulators like promoter and repressor proteins.
Turing machine: A mathematical model of computation that manipulates symbols on a tape according to a table of rules.
Von Neumann architecture: A computer architecture design that physically separates storage for instructions and data. See also “Harvard architecture”.
Wetware: A concept describing hybrid systems that combine traditional computing hardware with biological components, particularly neurons.