A VLSI Circuit Emulation of Chemical Synaptic Transmission Dynamics and Postsynaptic DNA Transcription

Abstract

Chemical synaptic transmission dynamics in the mammalian wetware control the activities of a living creature. During this cascading process, biological information is transferred from one neuron to another (the next) neuron. Many electronic circuits have been designed to implement neural synaptic communication; however, the invention of the memristor has raised the prospect of novel, highly efficient, and miniaturized neural circuit emulation. A novel VLSI circuit emulation of the chemical synaptic process at the biomolecular level (molecular level neuromorphic circuit) has been presented in this paper. Memristors and operational amplifiers in various configurations are key components in this silicon-based emulation. Commencement of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) transcription of certain neural gene in the postsynaptic neuron (through Ca +2 ion stimulation) is a major consequence of the synaptic transmission dynamics. Thus, this paper also proposes an integrated circuit model for the postsynaptic neural DNA transcription.A comparison of the silicon-based measured results using the proposed model with experimentally reported biological data justifies the validity of the proposed model. Stochastic aspects are also simulated through Monte Carlo analysis of the circuit model.

DNA Reaction Network Mimicking the Basic Steps of Synaptic Communication

“…There have been works in electronics about modeling and simulation of chemical synapses, even down to the biomolecular level. [ 28‐29 ] Analog electronics are an important tool for building large‐scale interaction networks, and the construction of DNA circuits is essentially a large‐scale interaction network. However, the exploration of linking electronic circuits with DNA reaction networks based on a natural biological system has not been reported.…”