Tiny Swimming Bio-Bots are Self-Propelled with Beating Heart Cells
A team of engineers have developed tiny bio-hybrid machines capable of swimming on their own using contractions from grafted heart cells. From University of Illinois:
The bio-bots are modeled after single-celled creatures with long tails called flagella – for example, sperm. The researchers begin by creating the body of the bio-bot from a flexible polymer. Then they culture heart cells 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.
This self-organization is a remarkable emergent phenomenon, Saif said, and how the cells communicate with each other on the flexible polymer tail is yet to be fully understood. But the cells must beat together, in the right direction, for the tail to move.
“It’s the minimal amount of engineering – just a head and a wire,” Saif said. “Then the cells come in, interact with the structure, and make it functional.”
The team also built two-tailed bots, which they found can swim even faster. Multiple tails also opens up the possibility of navigation. The researchers envision future bots that could sense chemicals or light and navigate toward a target for medical or environmental applications.
“The long-term vision is simple,” said Saif, who is also part of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the U. of I. “Could we make elementary structures and seed them with stem cells that would differentiate into smart structures to deliver drugs, perform minimally invasive surgery or target cancer?”
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