Biohybrid Walking Microrobot with Self-Assembled Cardiomyocytes.
General Material Designation
[Book]
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
INTECH Open Access Publisher,
Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.
2010.
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item
1 online resource
MATERIAL SPECIFIC AREA: ELECTRONIC RESOURCE CHARACTERISTICS
Designation and extent of file
Computer data.
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
By growing rat muscle tissues on a polymer backbone, we demonstrated the movement of the cell powered microrobot. From the viewpoint of a walking microrobot driven by muscle, the cell powered microrobot has novel originality and great significance in the robotics field. The proposed microrobot has the following characteristics: (1) the self-assembled hybrid microrobot consists of biotic muscle cells and PDMS backbone, which is well-known as a biocompatible material. (2) The surface of PDMS backbone is engineered into a groove pattern, which promotes higher order cell concentration and realizes higher generative force of the muscle cells than a 2D culture surface. (3) PDMS is easily fabricated by the? a? micromolding procedure and thus high throughput and mass-production of the cell powered microrobot become possible. (4) The long term monitoring result of the primary cultured cardiomyocytes on engineered surfaces is firstly reported and analyzed. Consequently, the walking robot showed reliable and long-term actuation performances. During the organization of the cardiomyocyte-PDMS hybrid microrobot, the groove surface provided an adverse environment in the initial stages of cell attachment and at adaptation to the surfaces by the modifications in the specific gene expression of the isoforms of troponin and connexin. However, once the cells settled down, more vigorous and synchronous propelling forces were generated through the tighter cell-cell contacts, intracellular arrangements of vesicles and cytoskeltons and higher stimuli according to the microenvironment on the groove surfaces. As quantitative results, the stress of 25 nN/m2 was calculated, which was induced on the flat surface of the microcantilever by the contractile force of the cardiomyocytes. Then, the force of the cardiomyocytes cultured on the groove surface microcantilever increased up to 60% higher than that on the flat surface cantilever. Finally, the forward movement of the micro-robot with the groove surface was monitored, and the measured speed was about 140 ms-1.