TY - JOUR
T1 - A self-propelled biohybrid swimmer at low Reynolds number
AU - Williams, Brian J.
AU - Anand, Sandeep V.
AU - Rajagopalan, Jagannathan
AU - Saif, M. Taher A.
N1 - Funding Information:
This project was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Science and Technology Center on Emergent Behaviors in Integrated Cellular Systems (EBICS) Grant CBET-0939511. We thank Professors R. Bashir, H. Asada, R. Weiss and R. Kamm for technical discussions, V. Chan for his assistance with culturing cells and M. Johnston for his assistance with measuring fluid viscosities. We are grateful to Professors Thomas Skalak and Howard Stone for their insightful technical comments and suggestions on the work.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
PY - 2014/1/17
Y1 - 2014/1/17
N2 - Many microorganisms, including spermatozoa and forms of bacteria, oscillate or twist a hairlike flagella to swim. At this small scale, where locomotion is challenged by large viscous drag, organisms must generate time-irreversible deformations of their flagella to produce thrust. To date, there is no demonstration of a self propelled, synthetic flagellar swimmer operating at low Reynolds number. Here we report a microscale, biohybrid swimmer enabled by a unique fabrication process and a supporting slender-body hydrodynamics model. The swimmer consists of a polydimethylsiloxane filament with a short, rigid head and a long, slender tail on which cardiomyocytes are selectively cultured. The cardiomyocytes contract and deform the filament to propel the swimmer at 5-10 μms-1, consistent with model predictions. We then demonstrate a two-tailed swimmer swimming at 81 μms-1. This small-scale, elementary biohybrid swimmer can serve as a platform for more complex biological machines.
AB - Many microorganisms, including spermatozoa and forms of bacteria, oscillate or twist a hairlike flagella to swim. At this small scale, where locomotion is challenged by large viscous drag, organisms must generate time-irreversible deformations of their flagella to produce thrust. To date, there is no demonstration of a self propelled, synthetic flagellar swimmer operating at low Reynolds number. Here we report a microscale, biohybrid swimmer enabled by a unique fabrication process and a supporting slender-body hydrodynamics model. The swimmer consists of a polydimethylsiloxane filament with a short, rigid head and a long, slender tail on which cardiomyocytes are selectively cultured. The cardiomyocytes contract and deform the filament to propel the swimmer at 5-10 μms-1, consistent with model predictions. We then demonstrate a two-tailed swimmer swimming at 81 μms-1. This small-scale, elementary biohybrid swimmer can serve as a platform for more complex biological machines.
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U2 - 10.1038/ncomms4081
DO - 10.1038/ncomms4081
M3 - Article
C2 - 24435099
AN - SCOPUS:84899834991
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 5
JO - Nature communications
JF - Nature communications
M1 - 3081
ER -