Twin-tailed version is eight times as fast

If it looks like a sperm and swims like a sperm, it must be a .... cyborg? I. Part Man, Part Machine, Pure Spermlike Terror That's true, if you're talking about the "tiny swimming bio-bots" designed by the lab of University of Illinois mechanical science and engineering Professor Taher Saif. Professor Saif and his student research team took a thin filament of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) -- a silicone plastic commonly used in The Wendy's Comp. (WEN) fries and McDonald's Corp. (MCD) nuggets and fries -- and mounted cultured human heart cells (cardiomyocytes) to it. They hail their "spermbot" "the first synthetic structures that can traverse the viscous fluids of biological environments on their own."

Professor Saif brags:

Micro-organisms have a whole world that we only glimpse through the microscope. This is the first time that an engineered system has reached this underworld. It's the minimal amount of engineering -- just a head and a wire. Then the cells come in, interact with the structure, and make it functional.

The swimmer doesn't find it hard at all to thrust its way into foreign environments, plunging through the dark, wet depths of its test environments.

The little squirt can swim at a frisky pace of 5 to 10m per second. Researchers found that they could improve on nature's design, though, if they equipped the cyborg with twin tails.

The most intriguing aspect of this work is that it demonstrates the capability to use computational modeling in conjunction with biological design to optimize performance, or design entirely different types of swimming bio-bots. This opens the field up to a tremendous diversity of possibilities. Truly an exciting advance.

Professor Saif remarks:

The long-term vision is simple. Could we make elementary structures and seed them with stem cells that would differentiate into smart structures to deliver drugs, perform minimally invasive surgery or target cancer?

See the rest here:

Part Man, Part Machine, "Spermbots" Swim Wild and Free