Today post I would
like to share with all reader about a research which have done by scientist in
Massachusets Institution of Technology (MIT).
After a long period of time research
they done, now they found cell in human body can be created with high
technology in this era. The picture above is a rendering of bacterial cell
engineered to produce amyloid nanofibers that incorporate particles. The coloured
particle is called Quantum dot.
They called this new technology
“living materials”. The technology combine the advantages of live cells, which
respond to their environment, produce complex biological molecules, and span
multiple length scales, with the benefits of nonliving materials, which add
functions such as conducting electricity or emitting light. Base on one of MIT scientist Timothy Lu an assistant
professor of electrical and biological engineering which represent his group
during Massachusets convention of expedition said that, their idea to put the
living and non-living worlds together to make an hybrid materials that have
living cells in them and are functional. Moreover, it is an interesting way of
thinking about materials.
According to Timothy Lu, by
programming cells to produce different types of curli fibers under certain
conditions, the researchers were able to control the biofilms’ properties and
create gold nanowires, conducting biofilms, and films studded with quantum
dots, or tiny crystals that exhibit quantum mechanical properties. They also
engineered the cells so they could communicate with each other and change the
composition of the biofilm over time. Curli fibre is the E.coli bacteria which
naturally produces biofilms and amyloid protein.
Cells that talk to
each other
Believe or not cells in living organism were actually can talk to each other. It
has been proved with the researchers which also demonstrated that the cells can
coordinate with each other to control the composition of the biofilm. They
designed cells that produce untagged CsgA and also AHL, which then stimulates
other cells to start producing histidine-tagged CsgA. CsgA is a complex
biological molecules, and span multiple length scales, with the benefits of
nonliving materials, which add functions such as conducting electricity or
emitting light.
“It’s a really simple system but what happens over time is you get curli that’s
increasingly labeled by gold particles. It shows that indeed you can make cells
that talk to each other and they can change the composition of the material
over time,” Lu says. “Ultimately, we hope to emulate how natural systems, like
bone, form. No one tells bone what to do, but it generates a material in
response to environmental signals.”
The research was funded by the Office of Naval Research, the Army Research
Office, the National Science Foundation, the Hertz Foundation, the Department
of Defense, the National Institutes of Health, and the Presidential Early
Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.
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