Aryballe engineers developed silicon biosensors adorned with artificial proteins that physically bind to odor molecules, allowing a literal computer chip to smell a rotting piece…

A closer look

Getting judged by a human is bad enough, but having a silicon chip critique the smell of your leftovers is devastating. Aryballe engineered machine olfaction sensors by grafting hundreds of lab-synthesized peptides onto a tiny optical chip. When volatile organic compounds (smells) float over the chip, they stick to these proteins in highly specific geometric patterns. A laser reads this invisible molecular binding and uses machine learning to instantly classify whether it is smelling expensive perfume, a gas leak, or just bad cheese.