Tiny Robots Powered by Living Muscle Cells

voma writes "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. Muscles like these could be used in a host of microscopic devices - even to drive miniature electrical generators to power computer chips."

Comments

Colour Pictures of Muscles in PDF Form

[ematic]

The abstract on the Nature website wasn't doing it for me. I wanted to see a picture. After a quick bit of searching I found the PDF that explains more and has three colourised pictures. http://www.spie.org/paper/FirstSelf.pdf

Not ATP. Sugars or fats.

[Engineer-Poet]

The actin-myosin fibers in the muscle run on ATP, but the muscle cell generates this itself. The fuel used by the cell is carbohydrates and fats, which is turned into energy (ATP) for the fibers and other processes. The energy-generating process can be either anaerobic (fermentation) or aerobic (respiration). For more information, look here.

Re:This is not what the abstract says

[Goldsmith]

Read that abstract again.

Also, you obviously did not read the full paper. The first half was on connecting the muscle cells to a cantilever. The second half of the paper deals with a silicon/metal film structure on which muscle cells are grown, which then detached from the bulk silicon and is able to move around on a surface of a chip without being tethered to anything. The power comes from the consumption of glucose which the whole assembly is immersed in.

If you read the paper, the new part of this study has to do with growing the cells in place on a device which is designed to move rather than tricking mature cells into cooperating, or growing static cells.

Don't be so quick to assume everything worth doing has already been done.