16 September 2024ByPeter A Noble & Alex Pozhitkov, The Conversation Biobots could one day be engineered to deliver drugs and clear up arterial plaque. (Kriegman et al. 2020/PNAS, CC BY-SA)Life and death are traditionally viewed as opposites. But the emergence of new multicellular life-forms from the cells of a dead organism introduces a “third state”...
JANUARY 20TH, 2023 CONN HASTINGS GENETICS, MATERIALS, MEDICINE, SURGERY Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed centimeter-scale biobots that combine soft materials, mouse muscle tissue, and wireless electronic components. The tiny devices can be controlled remotely through optogenetics. The muscle within the devices forms an optogenetic actuator and creates movement when exposed to light....
By Nick Lavars Tiny, soft robots that can safely navigate biological settings like the human body could mean big things for medical treatment, but moving them through these environments is much easier said than done. Scientists at the University of Illinois have come up with a promising new possibility, describing biohybrid robots that can be...
