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Muscle-powered bio-bots walk on command
Engineers at the University of Illinois (UI) at Urbana-Champaign developed "bio-bots," tiny biological machines powered by muscle cells and controlled with electrical pulses, giving researchers unprecedented command over their function.
The bio-bots--less than a centimeter in size and made of flexible, 3-D-printed hydrogels and living cells--were created by a team of engineers led by Rashid Bashir, the Abel Bliss Professor and head of the Department of Bioengineering at U of I. The bio-bots are powered by a strip of skeletal muscle cells that can be triggered by an electric pulse, giving researchers a simple way to control the bio-bots and allowing them to customize the bio-bots for specific applications.
The design--inspired by the muscle-tendon-bone complex found in nature--includes a backbone of 3-D printed hydrogel strong enough to give the bio-bot structure but flexible enough to bend like a joint. In addition to acting as feet for the bio-bot, two posts anchor a strip of muscle to the backbone, similar to how tendons attach muscle to bone. The bio-bot's speed is controlled by adjusting the frequency of the electric pulses. A higher frequency makes the muscle contract faster, speeding up the bio-bots progress.
Future work includes gaining greater control over the bio-bots motion, such as integrating neurons so the bio-bots can be steered in different directions with light or chemical gradients, and, on the engineering side, designing a hydrogel backbone that will allow the bio-bots to move in different directions based on different signals.
"The idea of doing forward engineering with these cell-based structures is very exciting," Bashir said. "Our goal is for these devices to be used as autonomous sensors. We want it to sense a specific chemical and move towards it, then release agents to neutralize the toxin, for example. Being in control of the actuation is a big step forward toward that goal."
The National Science Foundation supported this work through a Science and Technology Center (Emergent Behavior of Integrated Cellular Systems) grant (CBET 09-39511 and ), in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Georgia Institute of Technology and other partner institutions.
To learn more, see the UI news story Muscle-powered bio-bots walk on command. (Date of Image: June 2014)
Credit: Image created by Janet Sinn-Hanlon, DesignGroup@VetMed for Dr. Rashid Bashir, Department of Bioengineering, University of Illinois
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