Researchers created "synthetic self-propelled swimming bio-bots" that swim like sperm.
The tiny robots are the first man-made structures that can move through "viscous fluids of biological environments" without assistance, a University of Illinois news release reported.
"Micro-organisms have a whole world that we only glimpse through the microscope," Taher Saif a University of Illinois Gutgsell Professor of mechanical science and engineering, said in the news release . "This is the first time that an engineered system has reached this underworld."
The bots are inspired by single-celled creatures called flagella. One examples of a flagella is a sperm.
The bio-bots are made from polymer; heart cells are cultured at the head an tail of the synthetic organism, which sends a beat down the bot's body and propels it forwards.
"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 a two-tailed bot that can swim even faster than the original model. The researchers hope they can improve the model even more by creating bots that can sense "chemicals or light" in order to better-navigate through their surroundings.
"The long-term vision is simple," Saif said, "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?"
"The most intriguing aspect of this work is that it demonstrates the capability to use computational modeling in conjunction with biological design to optimize performance, or design entirely different types of swimming bio-bots," center director Roger Kamm, a professor of biological and mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said. "This opens the field up to a tremendous diversity of possibilities. Truly an exciting advance."
The project is part of a larger program called the Science and Technology Center on Emergent Behaviors in Integrated Cellular Systems, which is funded by the National Science Foundation.
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