The biologist part of me says meh. The paper to me is more about the computer aspects and automation. What they did with the yeast is old news and not very novel and exploits a well known biological process. What they did was use sensors and automated the process. Basically they automated a process so a grad student didn't have to sit there and push buttons to turn lights on or off. The detector portion is already automatic, they just hooked it to the light switch.
It is pretty cool the level of regulation they could get. There are potential applications, but the biggest trick is finding a sensor for the protein of interest. They used a protein that glows in the dark that is very popular among scientist, and very easy to detect.
