New research could lead to cells learning how to do things by themselves – including body repair"When I started thinking about how to do this project, I got colleagues from six universities in Europe to meet up in Manchester and said, 'I want to build a bacterial brain in a dish'."Everyone went very quiet, thinking, 'We've come all the way to Manchester and now it turns out this guy's insane'."Dr Martyn Amos, senior lecturer in computing and mathematics at Manchester Metropolitan University, sounds entirely unrepentant, possibly even gleeful.His brain in a dish idea, he says, was intended to be provocative, but in essence, that's what he and academics from universities in France, Spain, Belgium and Germany are now hoping to ...