ENGINEERS DESIGN "LIVING MATERIALS"

                         

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.