The world of aquatic micro organisms shall soon see synthetic
self-propelled swimming bio-bots. A class of tiny bio-hybrid machines that
can traverse the viscous fluids of biological environments on their own, has
been developed by a team of engineers. Led by Taher Saif, the University of
Illinois Gutgsell Professor of mechanical science and engineering, developed
these tiny machines that swim like a sperm.
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These
bio-bots are modelled after single-celled microbes with long tails called flagella.
Its body has been made from a flexible polymer. Then ,heart cells were cultured
near the junction of the head and the
tail. The cells self-align and synchronize to beat together, sending a wave
down the tail that propels the bio-bot forward. Such self organization is a
remarkable emergent phenomenon. However, how the cells communicate with each
other on the flexible polymer tail still needs to be understood. But the cells
must beat together, in the right direction, for the tail to move.
According
to Saif, it is a minimal amount of engineering, only a head and a wire. Then
the cells come in, interact with the structure, and make it functional.
Also built
two-tailed bots has been developed by the team, which they found can swim even
faster. There are possibilities of navigation due to multiple tails. In future
, Bots can be developed that could sense chemicals or light and navigate toward
a target for medical or environmental applications. Possibility of elementary
structures and seeding them with stem cells that would differentiate into smart
structures to deliver drugs, perform minimally invasive surgery or target
cancer is further thought of by the researchers.
The
swimming bio-bot project is part of a larger National Science
Foundation-supported Science and Technology Center on Emergent Behaviors in
Integrated Cellular Systems, which also produced the walking bio-bots developed
at Illinois in 2012.
According
to A center director Roger Kamm, a professor of biological and mechanical
engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The most intriguing
aspect of this work is that it demonstrates the capability to use computational
modelling in conjunction with biological design to optimize performance, or
design entirely different types of swimming bio-bots
