A paper published on 16th of July 2015 by Scientific Reports has caught the eye of many robotic enthusiasts out there, as a Virginia Tech scientist has used a mathematical model to illustrate that bacteria have the capability to control the operations of a robot.
"Basically we were trying to find out from the mathematical model if we could build a living microbiome on a nonliving host and control the host through the microbiome," said Ruder, an assistant professor of biological systems engineering in both the College of Agriculture and Life sciences and the College of Engineering.
"We found that robots may indeed be able to have a working brain," he said.
In future experiments, Ruder is looking into assembling a robot that has the ability to read and perform an analysis upon bacterial gene expression levels in E.coli, using miniature florescent microscopes. At that point the robots will respond to bacteria that he and his team will engineer in the lab.
Thinking about this upon a larger scale, the communication between living tissue and technology could have profound effects upon the understanding of biomedical science and robotics and may one day bridge the gap between the two.
For example in agriculture, robot-bacteria model systems could produce studies that investigate the interaction of soil bacteria and livestock. In healthcare this technology could prove to elaborate upon how bacteria has such an influence in the stomach.
The findings here can also contribute to the research upon the bacteria that co-exist with our bodies that they regulate or bodies mechanisms physically and psychologically. This sturdy was inspired by real ongoing experiments in which the mating behavior of fruit flies was manipulated and coordinated by bacteria, alongside this mammals haven’t been left out either. Mice exhibited lower signs of stress when implanted with these probiotics. As you can proably see, the milltary and civil applications of this reaseach in the long term could be used for great, and also terrible things.
Ruder’s method exposed that coordinating the behavior of the bacteria themselves can be quite a robust system and practice, as his equations produced are already widely accepted, as they cover three completely different elements: engineered gene circuits inE. coli, microfluid bioreactors, and robot movement.
The bacteria in Ruder’s mathematical model have had their genetic circuity altered to produce a green bioluminescence or red bioluminescence according to what they have eaten. The robot in the model was equipped with sensors and a miniature-microscope to measure which colour was being emitted and react accordingly.
This model has some surprising higher functions, as in one instance the bacteria directed the robot towards more food however the robot paused before quickly reaching the food. This illustrated predatory behavior as animals do in the wild, this was odd to understand how bacteria would follow the same practice.
One great aspect of Ruder’s modeling is that the cost to produce such biosynthetic experiments would be quite low in the future allowing more research to be done within this area. As the funding for his experiments was produced by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
"We hope to help democratize the field of synthetic biology for students and researchers all over the world with this model," said Ruder. "In the future, rudimentary robots and E. coli that are already commonly used separately in classrooms could be linked with this model to teach students from elementary school through Ph.D.-level about bacterial relationships with other organisms."
Story Source:
The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Virginia Tech. The original item was written by Amy Loeffler. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference:
Keith C. Heyde, Warren C. Ruder. Exploring Host-Microbiome Interactions using an in Silico Model of Biomimetic Robots and Engineered Living Cells. Scientific Reports, 2015; 5: 11988 DOI:10.1038/srep11988