Mini robot powered by bacteria
What do you get when you put a biochemist and a mechanical engineer together?
A microscopic biomotor.
It’s not funny, but Alicja Copik, a graduate student at Utah State University, laughs when she talks about it.
She said she and Eldrid Sequeira were an unusual site at the Foresight Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology in Bethesda, Md., last fall, where they presented an idea that is making waves in nanotechnology. Scientists presenting ideas at major conferences generally have a Ph.D., but these two students didn’t have a Ph.D. working with them.
A year ago, Copik was a busy biochemistry grad student, working as a research assistant and studying to begin working on her Ph.D. thesis.
Then Eldrid Sequeira, an undergraduate student in mechanical engineering, moved into her apartment complex. He was working on a project dealing with wheels, but his interest lay in nanotechnology – studying microscopic tools.
“We were there together anyway,” Copik said. “Eldrid said, ‘Let’s do something that will connect mechanical engineering and biochemistry.'”
The most difficult part was coming up with a project, Copik said. Sequeira wanted to make a tiny engine to power tiny things. He didn’t know exactly what, and he didn’t know how, but he wanted to make it work. If Copik could come up with a biological power source, he could design it.
“We said, ‘Yes, cool idea,'” Copik said. “But how to do it?”
For the next few months, they continued with their independent studies, the idea rolling around in their heads. Then it came.
“Alicja was taking my class in microbial physiology,” said Jon Takemoto, a USU biology professor. Among the topics covered in the class was bacterial response to chemical stimuli.
Bacteria propel themselves around with flagella, the way a tadpole propels forward with its tail. Different chemicals make the flagella do different things – spin faster, change directions.
“I remember her sitting in the front row of class,” Takemoto said. “She was just lit up.”
Copik said it clicked right away.
Scientists had to be able to take down data on the flagella as they whipped around, so the bacteria had to be stuck to a little plate to keep it from moving all over and messing up their measurements. If enough of those plates were attached to an axis, like a windmill, and the bacteria stuck to them were all moving together in the same chemical, they could be a little engine.
“With that, I went to Eldrid and said, ‘We have our project,'” Copik said.
Without funds and without a lab to work in, they couldn’t perform any experiments of their own. But, as Copik had learned in class, most of the data was already available. So she poured over scientific papers, and Sequeira calculated weights and volumes. Their conclusions made sense to them, and professors weren’t discouraging.
“No one said anything really bad about it,” Copik said. “They said, ‘It’s pretty cool, and it could work.”
So they kept on, and in a few months, using a computer program Sequeira had created, they had a virtual model of their final product: a little submarine powered by swimming bacteria.
“I was surprised but impressed,” Takemoto said.
Now, typing “Eldrid Sequeira” in a search engine on the Internet brings up dozens of Web sites, from the BBC, to the Internet magazine New Scientist, to Time magazine. If the project is to go anywhere, this is the kind of attention that will get it there, Takemoto said. A lot of work has yet to be done. They speculate the submarine could hold medicine to cure a tumor, or unclog arteries, but first it will have to attract a company interested in funding further research and development.
Sequeira is in another state now, working on an article about the research at the request of Drug Discovery Today, an international science journal. Copik is still working on her Ph.D. and doesn’t know yet if they’ll ever finish with the project. But the idea is out there now.
“I think it’s something that could be the basis of new technology,” Takemoto said.