© Raj Creationzs/ShutterstockThe bio-hybrid machines can swim like sperm and are modeled after flagella.
Engineers from the University of Illinois have developed a new line of miniature, swimming bio-bots - the first class of synthetic structures capable of traveling through viscous biological fluids on their own.
Their bio-hybrid machines, which are detailed in the January 17 edition of the journal
Nature Communications, can swim like sperm and are modeled after flagella, or single-celled creatures that have long tails, the researchers explained in a statement.
"Micro-organisms have a whole world that we only glimpse through the microscope," said lead investigator
Taher Saif, a mechanical science and engineering professor at the university. "This is the first time that an engineered system has reached this underworld."
Saif and his colleagues began by creating the body of this bio-bot using a flexible polymer, and then they cultured heart cells near the junction of its head and tail. Those cells self-aligned and synchronized to beat together, sending a wave down the machines' tails and propelling them forward, they explained.
According to the university, this self-organization is "a remarkable emergent phenomenon" and while they do not fully understand exactly how the cells on the flexible polymer tail are able to communicate with one-another, they have to beat together in the correct direction in order for movement to occur in the tail.
Comment: FINALLY!
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