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What did the project actually do?
Ramlan created the project for MIT course 20.305, Principles of Synthetic Biology. Her portfolio describes it as a simulation of how long DOOM would take using bacteria as the display system. Popular Science and Engadget reported the project in 2024.
The reported display was a 32×48, one-bit array. In practical terms, that is a small grid in which each pixel has one of two states: illuminated or not. E. coli cells fluoresced to represent illuminated pixels, producing a highly simplified DOOM frame.
Why “bacteria ran DOOM” needs a qualification
A screen shows information; a processor performs the calculations that generate it. In Ramlan’s project, the bacteria supplied the display medium. The available descriptions do not establish that the cells executed DOOM’s game logic or made it a conventionally playable game.
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That distinction makes the headline understandable but imprecise: the project displayed DOOM imagery with E. coli rather than building a bacterial computer that played DOOM.
How slow was the bacterial display?
Popular Science and Engadget reported that illuminating a frame took about 70 minutes. Afterward, the cells needed about 8 hours and 20 minutes to return toward their starting state. That long cycle is the key to understanding the project’s eye-catching time estimate.
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By comparison, an electronic gaming display can update rapidly and show far more detail. Ramlan’s reported 32×48 grid and one-bit pixels instead made the bacterial setup a deliberately limited way to represent an image—not a practical gaming screen.
What does the “nearly 600 years” figure mean?
Reports estimated that completing the game would take nearly 600 years at the bacterial display’s slow cycle. This was a theoretical extrapolation from the setup’s refresh rate, not an observed play-through. It should not be read as a measured completion time for bacteria independently running the game.
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Why use bacteria as pixels?
The project is an unusual demonstration of synthetic biology applied to visual display: living cells can be used to represent image information. Its significance is the experiment in using E. coli as a display medium, not an alternative way to play DOOM.
Ramlan’s write-up, quoted by Popular Science, puts the idea succinctly: “To run Doom, all one needs is a screen and willpower.”
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