Associative Learning and Memory Erasure in a Synthetic Multicellular System

A five-strain Escherichia coli consortium implements associative learning and memory erasure, with the conditioned stimulus evoking a strong response after pairing and returning to background after an erase command.

• Why it matters: Engineering associative learning in living cells is hard because coincidence detection, memory storage, and conditional readout must be integrated into one regulatory network.
• What they did: The consortium splits learning into five strains that communicate via one diffusible quorum-sensing signal used as the memory trace, and a population model accounts for response sequences and design rules for writing, retention, and erasure.
• The result: Experimentally, the conditioned stimulus alone drives the response after medium exchange removes both stimuli, the reporter is not produced without its input, and an erase command restores background.

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