Duke University bioengineers have uncovered the existence of “bistability,” in which an individual cell has the potential to live in either of two states, depending on which state it was in when stimulated.

Taking into account the effects of this phenomenon should greatly enhance the future efficiency of synthetic circuits, they suggest.

Re-programmed bacteria in a synthetic circuit can be useful for producing proteins, enzymes or chemicals in a coordinated way, or even delivering different types of drugs or selectively killing cancer cells.