Musclebound “Bio-bots” Move Around in Response to Light
By wrapping rings of genetically engineered mouse muscle tissue around a variety of soft 3-D printed skeletons, researchers built what they call “bioactuators” that convert energy into motion when stimulated by a specific wavelength of light. The group built a few different varieties of the millimeter-scale bio-bots and got them to jump around by shining flashes of light at them. They say the tiny machines could one day be used to deliver drugs inside the human body.
The research was led by Rashid Bashir, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Previously, Bashir led a group that demonstrated bio-bots that responded to an electrical field, but the new optogenetic approach is less invasive and provides more control over their movement. The video below shows a bio-bot made of one muscle ring and two symmetrical, 3-D printed “legs.” Stimulating only one leg makes it move in the direction of that leg.
Keep Reading
Most Popular

The dark secret behind those cute AI-generated animal images
Google Brain has revealed its own image-making AI, called Imagen. But don't expect to see anything that isn't wholesome.

The hype around DeepMind’s new AI model misses what’s actually cool about it
Some worry that the chatter about these tools is doing the whole field a disservice.

The walls are closing in on Clearview AI
The controversial face recognition company was just fined $10 million for scraping UK faces from the web. That might not be the end of it.

This horse-riding astronaut is a milestone in AI’s journey to make sense of the world
OpenAI’s latest picture-making AI is amazing—but raises questions about what we mean by intelligence.
Stay connected

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.