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SUMMARY:MEchanics GAthering -MEGA- Seminar: Emergent living machines
DTSTART:20191031T161500
DTEND:20191031T173000
DTSTAMP:20260921T115812Z
UID:fc76692eb3bfaf3c585d8902ba24cf173231d91d07ed980ba9c6d056
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Taher Saif\, Mechanical Science and Engineering\, University 
 of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign\nIndustrial revolution of the 19th century
  marked the onset of the era of machines that transformed societies. Howev
 er\, these machines cannot self assemble or heal themselves. On the other 
 hand\, since the discovery of genes\, there is a considerable body of know
 ledge on engineering living cells. It is now possible to envision biohybri
 d machines with engineered living cells and scaffolds. These machines may 
 self assemble and emerge from complex interactions between the cells and t
 he scaffolds at various hierarchical levels. In this talk we will present 
 two elementary biohybrid machines. They are both small scale swimmers. One
  of the swimmers is powered by primary rat cardiomyocytes. These cells are
  plated without any patterning on a scaffold which consists of a head and 
 a tail. The cells self-orient to maximize scaffold deformation\, and synch
 ronize their beating. As a result\, the tail deforms periodically and prop
 els the swimmer forward. As a first step towards intelligent machines\, th
 e second swimmer consists of optogenetic neurons and muscle cells. It’s 
 scaffold consists of a head and two tails. The muscle cells self assemble 
 into myotubes around the tails\, while the neurons are hosted by the head.
  The neurons spontaneously send out long cables of axons preferentially to
 wards the muscle forming functional neuro functional junctions. They also 
 form a neural network within themselves. Upon shining light\, the neurons 
 fire synchronously in a periodic fashion. The muscle contracts and bends t
 he tails to propel the swimmer. This new generation of swimmer powered by 
 neurons paves the way towards intelligent biohybrid machines. The central 
 role of mechanics in the emergence of the biohybrid machines will be highl
 ighted.
LOCATION:MED 2 2423 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==MED%202%202423
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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