Researchers tattooed tardigrads. Promise to be useful

Microfabrication E – just placed – the construction of small things, including microscopic and nanoscopic objects and models. Microfabbricia has a major potential in medicine and biomedical engineering, in addition to fields such as electronics and photonics – but first, researchers need to develop techniques that are biologically compatible. A team of researchers believes that a decisive step towards this purpose involves tattooing tardigrads.

In order to test the techniques needed to build microscopic biocompatible devices, researchers in China have found a way to give tattoos to tardigrads. If you think it’s crazy, just wait. Their approach, detailed in a exploration Posted at the end of March in the Nano Letters magazine, it can be important for the development of living micros, such as microbial cyborgs.

In fact, tardigrads, also known as water bears, are not just “durable” creatures. They are eight legs of animals about 0.02 inches (0.5 millimeters) and are virtually indestructible. Their amazing resistance to hunger, freezing temperatures, radiation, pressure and vacuum of space, surprisingly, inspire scientists to study whether people can learn thing or two Of them.

In a recent study, researchers dehydrate tardigrads to cause a cryptobiotic condition-something like a half-mell out of hibernation. They place the tardigrads on surfaces, cooled up to -226 degrees Fahrenheit (-143 degrees Celsius) and covered the tiny beings in Anisole, an organic compound flavored with anoso.

Using a focused electron beam, the researchers painted micropatrots on tardigrads such as squares, lines, dots and even a university logo. The frozen anisole layer, exposed directly to the beam, forms a new compound that adheres to the tardig. The team then warmed the tardig to room temperature under a vacuum, and the frozen Anisole, which did not respond with the sublimation of the electronic beam (turned into gas), leaving behind only the model created by the new chemical – the tattoo. Then they rehydrated the tardigrads.

The good news is that tattoos seem to have not influenced the revived tardigrads. The bad news is that only about 40% of the tardigrads have survived, but the researchers say this can be improved with more improvement. Nevertheless, the study suggests that researchers can use this method to print trace -electronics or sensors on living tissue.

“This approach provides a new idea of ​​the sustainability of the tardigrade and has potential applications in cryopreservation, biomedicine and astrobiology,” the researchers wrote in the study. Cryopreservation is the practice of protecting biological matter at very low temperatures. “In addition, the integration of micro/nanopabrabic techniques with living organisms can catalyze the progress in biosening, biomimetics and living micro -clobics.” Biommetics It involves imitation of the processes of nature in human creations.

Microbots are tiny robots that can perform tasks in the body of the body, as Deliver medicines and monitor and treat diseases. As such, we can assume that living microbots, such as Microbial cyborgsare hybrid robots that join synthetic technology and living cells to achieve more useful characteristics.

“Through this technology, we not only create tardigrade micro-tattoos are expanding this ability for various living organisms, including bacteria,” said Din Jao, co-authored the document and researcher at the Westlack Institute for Optoelectronics, said the American Chemical Society at the Westlake Institute for Optoele. statementS

“It is challenging to process live matter,” says Gavin King, a researcher at the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Missouri, who did not participate in the study. The statement credits King for inventing the technique used in the study called ice lithography. “This advance presents a new generation of biomaterial devices and biophysical sensors that have previously been present only in science fiction,” he concluded.