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 | | From: | Garrison Hilliard | | Subject: | "It's alive! ALIVE!" | | Date: | Tue, 18 Jan 2005 05:19:29 +0000 |
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 | 'Living' robots powered by muscle
By Roland Pease
BBC radio science unit
Tiny robots powered by living muscle have been created by scientists at the
University of California, Los Angeles.
The devices were formed by "growing" rat cells on microscopic silicon chips, the
researchers report in the journal Nature Materials.
Less than a millimetre long, the miniscule robots can move themselves without
any external source of power.
The work is a dramatic example of the marriage of biotechnology with the tiny
world of nanotechnology.
In nanotechnology, researchers often turn to the natural world for inspiration.
But Professor Carlo Montemagno, of the University of California, Los Angeles,
turns to nature not for ideas, but for actual starting materials.
In the past he has made rotary nano-motors out of genetically engineered
proteins. Now he has grown muscle tissue onto tiny robotic skeletons.
Living device
Montemano's team used rat heart cells to create a tiny device that moves on its
own when the cells contract. A second device looks like a minute pair of frog
legs.
"The bones that we're using are either a plastic or they're silicon based," he
said. "So we make these really fine structures that mechanically have hinges
that allow them to move and bend.
"And then by nano-scale manipulation of the surface chemistry, the muscle cells
get the cues to say, 'Oh! I want to attach at this point and not to attach at
another point'. And so the cells assemble, then they undergo a change, so that
they actually form a muscle.
"Now you have a device that has a skeleton and muscles on it to allow it to
move."
Under a microscope, you can see the tiny, two-footed "bio-bots" crawl around.
Professor Montemagno says muscles like these could be used in a host of
microscopic devices - even to drive miniature electrical generators to power
computer chips.
But when biological cells become attached to silicon - are they alive?
"They're absolutely alive," Professor Montemagno told BBC News. "I mean the
cells actually grow, multiply and assemble - they form the structure themselves.
So the device is alive."
The notion is likely to disturb many who already have concerns about
nanotechnology.
But for Carlo Montemagno, a professor of engineering, it makes sense to match
the solutions that nature has already found through billions of years of
evolution to the newest challenges in technology.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/4181197.stm
Published: 2005/01/17 13:25:10 GMT
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