Proteinoid Microspheres as Protoneural Networks

Abstract

Proteinoids, also known as thermal proteins, possess a fascinating ability to generate microspheres that exhibit electrical spikes resembling the action potentials of neurons. These spiking microspheres, referred to as protoneurons, hold the potential to assemble into proto-nanobrains. In our study, we investigate the feasibility of utilizing a promising electrochemical technique called differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) to interface with proteinoid nanobrains. We evaluate DPV's suitability by examining critical parameters such as selectivity, sensitivity, and linearity of the electrochemical responses. The research systematically explores the influence of various operational factors, including pulse width, pulse amplitude, scan rate, and scan time. Encouragingly, our findings indicate that DPV exhibits significant potential as an efficient electrochemical interface for proteinoid nanobrains. This technology opens up new avenues for developing artificial neural networks with broad applications across diverse fields of research.

Proto-Neurons from Abiotic Polypeptides

“…Proteinoid network emergent spiking behaviours are strikingly similar to the excitation dynamics observed in biological neurons: proteinoids exhibit propagating spikes, refractory periods, and explosive patterns that are characteristic of neural activity through spontaneous self-organisation [27,105,141,[183][184][185][186]. In the absence of genetic encoding, this presents a compelling model system for investigating the origins of neural-like signalling.…”

“…Peptide-derived membraneless protocells exhibit emergent proto-neural phenomena [141,142]. The basic polypeptides exhibit self-organisation capabilities in order to effectively process stimuli, similar to the functioning of natural sensory systems.…”

“…The electrical signalling capacity of proteinoids [27,105,141,[183][184][185][186] is partially attributable to their synthetic pathway, as illustrated in Figure 6. Through intramolecular condensation reactions, cyclic monomers such as pyroglutamic acid are produced when amino acids are heated.…”

“…The depicted Figure 10 showcases an artificial neural network model that offers a conceptual computational depiction of the dynamic signalling behaviours observed in interconnected networks of proteinoid microspheres [141]. The individual proteinoid vesicles are represented as artificial neural network (ANN) nodes, with weighted connections that can be compared to synaptic strengths.…”

Living Kombucha Electronics with Proteinoids

“…According to Mougkogiannis et al, let t ∈ R n represent a vector of time values measured in seconds, p ∈ R n×2 represent a matrix of potential values measured in volts for 2 different samples 52 . N ∈ N denotes the number of neurons in the Neural Network (NN), T ∈ R + indicates the time window for temporal coding measured in seconds, and θ ∈ R + represents the threshold for spike detection measured in volts.…”