Pac-Man meets biotechnology – Phys.Org

April 26, 2017 The authors artwork, illustrating the article, was also featured on the cover of Lab on a Chip. Credit: Royal Society of Chemistry

Scientists in the U.S have a designed a computer game that could help with biomedical research.

Scientists increasingly use miniscule robots to solve a range of problems, from cancer treatment to water purification. And, as with a lot of technology, the race is on to make these devices ever smaller.

However there is a limit to how far you can go with a mechanical device moving parts such as motors can physically only get so small.

So scientists are looking to the natural world to help. Single cell organisms, such as bacteria and algae, could make the parts in the miniaturised robots move, without the need for an external power source.

Such organisms respond to changes in their environment such as light and food by moving, and if these movements can be harnessed, we can use them as motors.

In a new paper just published in Lab on a Chip, Ingmar Riedel-Kruse and fellow scientists from Stanford University in the U.S. have demonstrated the use of one such organism, in the form of a game.

It's based on Euglena gracilis, single cell algae that move in response to changes in strong light. In the game, the organisms are directed around a maze or "captured" in a space on the screen by the users turning lights on and off. The ability to control the movement of the algae demonstrates their potential application in mini, single cell organism-driven motors.

In this set-up, the algae's movements are programmable a promising first step towards creating a microcomputer built on biotechnology.

Explore further: Single cell organism firm joins top ranks of Japan bourse

More information: Amy T. Lam et al. Device and programming abstractions for spatiotemporal control of active micro-particle swarms, Lab Chip (2017). DOI: 10.1039/C7LC00131B

The high-tech titans of Japanese industry were joined Wednesday in the major league of the Tokyo Stock Exchange by a company exploiting the 500-million-year-old science of a single cell organism.

Diatoms are unicellular algae that are native in many waters. They are a major component of marine phytoplankton and the food base for a large variety of marine organisms. In addition, they produce about one fifth of the ...

A new 3-D printed, easily assembled smartphone microscope developed at Stanford University turns microbiology into game time. The device allows kids to play games or make more serious observations with miniature light-seeking ...

Scientists at the John Innes Centre have discovered that Euglena gracilis, the single cell algae which inhabits most garden ponds, has a whole host of new, unclassified genes which can make new forms of carbohydrates and ...

Scientists at the Swedish Museum of Natural History have found fossils of 1.6 billion-year-old probable red algae. The spectacular finds, publishing on 14 March in the open access journal PLOS Biology, indicate that advanced ...

In an algae-eat-algae world, it's the single-celled photosynthetic organisms at the top (layer of the ocean) that absorb the most sunlight. Underneath, in the sublayers, are cryptophyte algae that must compete for photons ...

Rice University scientists have learned to spy on cells with a divide-and-conquer strategy to label proteins.

(Phys.org)A team of researchers from Russia, Brazil and Japan has uncovered the means by which two kinds of mushrooms glow in the dark. In their paper published on the open-access site Science Advances, the group describes ...

Nomad Scythian herders roamed vast areas spanning the Central Asian steppes during the Iron Age, approximately from the 9th to the 1st century BCE (Before Common Era). These livestock pastoralists, who lived on wagons covered ...

Our bodies are constantly under siege by foreign invaders; viruses, bacteria and parasites that want to infiltrate our cells. A new study in the journal eLife sheds light on how germ cells - sperm and egg - protect themselves ...

Two new species of African mole-rat have been discovered by researchers at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), together with colleagues in Tanzania and at the University of Pretoria.

The ancient Chinese practiced copromancy, the diagnosis of health based on the shape, size and texture of feces. So did the Egyptians, the Greeks and nearly every ancient culture. Even today, your doctor may ask when you ...

Please sign in to add a comment. Registration is free, and takes less than a minute. Read more

Visit link:
Pac-Man meets biotechnology - Phys.Org