Released in 1993, the first Doom game has been played in many different places before. But the latest experiment by researchers brings the action franchise to an unexpected place. Researchers at MIT have managed to run Doom in a bacterial cell.

Running Doom on a 1-bit screen with a bacterial cell

Lauren Ramlan, a bioengineering PhD student at MIT, has found a new way to play Doom. By bringing the game into a cell via E. coli bacteria, the researcher connected the bacteria to a computer to generate the graphics.

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The MIT researcher’s experiment focuses on genetically modified E. coli to display the game on the bacteria’s 1-bit screen. He tested E. coli cells on a 32×48 pixel screen. The cells were activated or deactivated to light up the pixels. Thus, it was also possible to run Doom.

Of course, even if Doom is opened in the bacteria, it is not possible to play it for real. It takes 70 minutes to activate the 1-bit display to which the cell is connected, and 8 hours for the cells to deactivate and reset for the next frame.

The researcher showed only two sample frames in his video. He calculated that it would take about 600 years to play the full game at this speed. But the experimental setup showed that synthetic biology can be connected to the screen and the computer.

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This work is critical to the development of new types of biological displays. It also allows Doom to be played in a previously untested environment.

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