Japan has successfully developed a micro-robot system that can move like a cell and be controlled by DNA.

Biotechnology Channel News: Biology is the most inspiring existence, but it is also difficult to replicate in robotics.
to achieve this goal, Japanese researchers have successfully designed a tiny robotic system that can move like a living cell.
week, scientists published their findings in the journal Science Robotics.
system is called a molecular robot and is shaped like an amoeba amoeba.
look like a liquid-filled sac with about 27 biological and chemical components in the structure, said Ichiro Nomura, a bioengineer at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, one of the robotics researchers.
molecular components work together to change the shape of the sac by stretching it, pushing the sac to move like a cell in a liquid environment.
controls the start and end of sac movement by using light-sensitive DNA signals.
in addition to moving in this strange way, the amoebus robot can do not do much.
but that's the beauty of the invention, Nomura said.
can be used as a vehicle to assemble anything researchers think of: microcomputers, sensors, and even drugs.
equipped with these tools, the amoebus robot system can be used to explore the biomolecule environment.
it can look for toxins, examine the surface of other cells, or analyze substances in petri dishes.
and his colleagues have come up with a way to package and transport the tools so that other scientists can "happily manipulate the robot" and assemble the components they need.
he hopes the platform will be used to build increasingly complex molecular robots with controlled motion.
, Nomura wanted to see robots working in cells.
"It's a cutting-edge technology," Nomura said.
amoebus robot can infiltrate the inside of a cell and its nucle nucleo, and can diagnose and look for problems inside the cell.
"It's kind of fantastic, " Nomura said, but it's worth noting that his robot size can be reduced to less than a micron - small enough to fit inside the cell.
have developed a number of concept-validated micron and nanoscale robots that can move and communicate within the body.
many of these tiny robots are made of biodegradable materials and are driven by magnetic, chemical or ultrasonic forces.
nomura's molecular robot is that it is made up entirely of biological and chemical components, moves like cells, and is controlled by DNA.
other molecular robots that have been developed, none of them have this maneuverable power, Nomura said.
said it took about a year and a half to make molecular robots using 27 different chemicals.
the lipid structure is used as a scalable robot body.
inside the robot, a special protein hits the membrane, causing it to change shape, similar to someone hitting it out from inside the bag.
shock motion only occurs when key proteins called drive proteins and micro tubes are connected to the membrane through the anchor unit.
the connection is provided by photoresmissive DNA.
when ultraviolet light shines on the robot, the internal photosensitive DNA splits into a single strand.
it can then lock into the anchor unit and drive the protein-micro-tube structure, forming a bridge between them.
micro-tube protein, which is a rigid, long-form structure that slides along the drive protein with the help of adenosine triphosphate or ATP-cell energy transfer molecules.
when they slide, they can hit the robot's outer membrane, causing it to change shape.
by using a combination of these molecules, Nomura and his colleagues successfully simulated cell movements.
if the technology was completely assembled by biological components and chemically driven by ATP, could we really call it a robot? "The definition of a robot is very broad, " Nomura said.
If there's something that has an entity that can sense and process information and perform a function, it's a robot, he said.
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