Slashdot Mirror
Bacteria Harnessed As Micro-Robot Motors
ElectricBrian writes "Researchers have found a way to propel micro-capsules by attaching bacteria (S. marcescens, the type that makes your shower curtain moldy). Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University fixed the bacteria to the micro-capsules and then used chemicals to turn on and off their motion-producing flagella. Quoting: 'In the future, such hybrid swimming micro-robots could even be used to deliver drugs inside the liquid environments of the human body, such as the urinary tract, eyeball cavity, ear, and cerebrospinal fluid...'"
they unionize. Then they'll lobby to get a monopoly on every drug-delivery job, and prices will skyrocket, and we'll have to call them "pharmaceutical delivery workers" instead of "bacteria".
Serious was there ever a better reason not to RTFA?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
no one will ever go up MY urinary tract. no sir.
~~~ Paf. Le chien.
The DEA will crush this new threat of drug carriers!!!
Deliver drugs to the inside of the eye using mold? They don't think there would be a minor complication with getting rid of the mold afterwards?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
How are you going to get bacteria into the cerebrospinal fluid? Inject them? If you're going to do that, why not just inject the drug?
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
yes. laziness.
~~~ Paf. Le chien.
As the attached bacteria rotate their flagella, feeding on surrounding glucose, they push their bead forward at speeds of around 15 microns per second.
As interesting as this sounds, they sure aren't going anywhere very fast.
15 microns is about 0.00059 inches, so to travel one inch, it would take about 1,700 seconds, or a half an hour. IANAD, but it seems like you'd have better luck just letting the body's digestive and circulatory systems do the work for you.
As an added bonus you won't need to start spraying Lysol's Mold and Mildew Remover in your eyes, ears, and uh, other places.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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"Dammit, Captain," Scotty said. "I'm an engineer, not a biologist!"
S. marcescens, the type that makes your shower curtain moldy
I was bothered by the slashdot summary because I didn't know that bacteria "did the mold thing." The article says that these bacteria contribute to pink stains, which I have seen and know but don't think of as being "moldy" per se. (The article doesn't use the term mold.)
Just so that I'm clear on this...isn't mold specifically referring to fungi?
Hmm, more bacteria with Windex and squeegees, inside your eye...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
But my shower curtain isn't moldy.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Will it look something like this? Just wait for them to rebel.
First. Who on earth is going to introduce a potentially pathogenic strain of bacteria into their bodily fluids--for example cerebral spinal fluids. I have no problem with science fiction, but let's keep the distinction between science/science fiction obvious.
Second. This idea of harnessing bacteria to move things around has already been done several times over now. The first demonstration was by Hiratsuka with Mycoplasma. Then Berg (Harvard) had a different approach with Serratia. Then Whitesides (Harvard) used Chlamydomonas. In fact, Wired magazine had a short summary of much of this work in the December 2006 issue.
Correct me if I am wrong but I don't see why this article has been slashdotted. Whoever checked off on this article needs to read up on science a little more closely.
Now serving your eye cavity!
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
Slashdotted!
Any cached version ? Google hasn't got this yet.
There is one good reason to work on this type of medicine delivery device and that is the eyes. The interior of the eye has NO blood flow. Delivering medicine inside the eye has some very tricky problems.
1. It needs to be perfectly clear...and/or
2. After it is injected it then needs to be able to be completely absorbed through the interior of the eye so as to not leave any residue floating around.
3. You can't go injecting a large amount of fluid into an already full fluid sac. High pressure against the retina can tear the retina wall, and can rupture the incredibly fine veins that supply the retina with blood (causing large amounts of what are known as floaters).
4. How do you get the medicine to disperse evenly throughout the fluid in the eye. If it's heavy it sinks, equal to the eye fluid it generally stays where it is, or eventually sinks, or if it's lighter then the fluid in they eye it rises to the top. Perhaps severely shaking the patient after the injection would help...
Now if you had a colony of microbes which could be directed to different areas in the eye or simply ordered to disperse and deliver the drug when it comes into contact with "x" then you would have something.
What can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.
Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University fixed the bacteria to the micro-capsules and then used chemicals to turn on and off their motion-producing flagella.
And despite the billion or so tiny bacteria voices, no one at CMU noticed when they said:
We as one welcome our new bacteria-enslaving scientist overlords!
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Don't worry. After the drug delivering mold has done its work we send in mold eating chinese needle snakes. But aren't those worse than the mold you say? Don't worry. After the mold's all gone we then send in gorillas to eat the snakes. What about the fact that you now have gorillas in your eyes? That's the real brilliance of the plan. Come winter, all the gorillas will freeze to death and the natural cleaning function of your eyes will flush them out after a short period, and you'll be fully cured! Another triumph of modern medicine.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
The elderly today dred having to pass a kidney stone ... when I'm that old, I'll get to look forward to passing gearboxes cause some terribly underpaid medical tech made a wrong left turn near my spleen.
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
Instead of flea circuses we can have bacteria circuses!
People for the Ethical Treatment of Bacteria start bombing government facilities in attempts to put an end to bacterial slave labor.
{whip snap} row! row! row! {snap} row! row! row!
Table-ized A.I.
S. marcescens is a bacterium. Any and all mold are fungi, as you stated. So the summary is using the terms interchangeably, and inappropriately. It is possible that the pink stains are inaccurately referred to as mold, and that might explain the summary author's remarks.
This was going to be a tiny robotic overlords post but tiny union overlords are even scarier.
Time to clean my shower.
With bleach.
Don't expect fast deliveries, they're not UPS. They only do 1.3mm per day (15nm/s). And lets hope direction is not an issue.
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I read the article and just skimmed the comments. The most common objection to this is "what about the mold; we don't like mold, mold is harmful, et cetera." The point of this new technology is that the researchers used chemicals to turn on the motion-producing flagella of an organism. Just ignore the word mold and replace it with any other bacteria. Hell, replace it with cockroach or zombie. If we could inject a chemical into a plant and get it to open and close its petals on OUR time instead of the sun's time, we could probably use it to generate electricity or power some kind of machine. I'm sure that the researchers chose mold because it's pretty resilient, it's predictable, it's simple, and it has flagella that can move it. They probably also chose mold because mold cells hang out together and wouldn't attack each other on the way to delivering medicine to your eye or other infected body part. This article is about tackling a problem in a new way. Presumably, the researchers can give a chemical to other kinds of bacteria and motivate them to deliver little packets of medicine. The organisms are cheap, they reproduce on their own, they don't mind being in warm and wet places, and they're disposable. Once they deliver their medicine, destroy them with penicillin. Brilliant!
if we can harness the power of stupidity we will be able to reach places never before thought possible.
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold
The Trojan bacterium.
E Proelio Veritas.
Bacteria Harnessed As Micro-Robot Motors
About damned time!
Too many bacteria are parasitic slackers.
Let the little boogers pull their own weight around here for a change, that's what I say!
-kgj
-kgj
Serratia marcescens is responsible for some pretty nasty pneumonias in hospitalized patients (I've seen quite a few cases in ICU's). That pink stain on the shower curtain they refer to turns into a dark red glob of sputum. It is also the cause of some urinary tract infections. In addition, they are also occasionally resistant to certain antimicrobials.
What an interesting (parent link) idea. I have been having some truly wonderful experiences with the little spirochaete flagella beasties in my brain & spinal fluid of late > http://www.newpath4.com/selfamputationdesireisabra indirectedsymptomoflymesdiseasespirocheteinfestati onofthehandsarmsfeetandlegextremitiesjanuary022007 .htm . After the number they did on me at 285 lbs. I'm sure the darn things can push micro-sized wheelbarrows around delivering meds.
Industrial Age 2 + How-to Stop Malignant Cancers.
The cryptofascist scientific community has gone too far! First it was abuse of multicellular animals, but now they intend to work our unicellular cousins to death! Just what happens to those poor S. marcescens bacteria when they've been forced to push those oh-so-neato drugs on the streetcorners of our fluid systems? They die! They aren't able to stop and grab a break, or a snack, or anything. In fact, why are they even considering putting a helpless little organism into a place its never evolved for? What if the poor creatures feel the need to break their slave chains and revolt? THINK OF WHERE THEY'D HAVE TO CONDUCT THAT REVOLT! No, I say this is doubly dangerous. It sets a precedent for the enslavement of the entire unicellular world! PETA will do something about it, I know it. Maybe they'll throw buckets of S. marcescens workers on the scientists, or simply expose the horrid working conditions another way, but I have faith in PETAs ability to help all the poor animals.
"*giggle* Good news... I figured out what the thing you just incinerated did..."
but wouldn't immune system attack bacteria? The "motors" may get clogged with antibodies faster then you can shout: "Lookout ! The macrophages are incoming!"
CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP...
Do you line up the injection point and angle? What about in the blood stream - how do you target a specific area? Or is just general movement to goal?
I am not a robot. I am a unicorn.