Bionic engineering: the first shoots
Once upon a time, when the trees were large, the grass was greener, and the word “bioengineering” had not yet been invented, I really wanted to become a bioengineer when I grew up. But this word for me personally meant something at the junction of biology, electronics and mechanics, but the result should have been a variety of devices combining live (or already dead) biological structures and electrical control circuits.
Applications of this imaginary technology were everywhere. For example, to grow a house of woven trees with proper patience can be done now, but to force a door from living branches to move apart according to the owner’s voice is not so easy. I think you all saw the concept of a flexible smartphone , which moves due to the alloy with the effect of memorizing the form - nothing prevents to introduce something similar at the growth stage into the plant and then make it move at its discretion. You can teach wicker furniture to adapt to the seated posture; use live indoor plants to monitor and automatically adjust indoor environment conditions; create live document cases opening in response to strictly defined environmental conditions, specific stimuli, or simply after a specified period. But what does this all have to do with real, modern biotechnology and bioengineering?
Now everyone has heard about science news, biomedical technologies and genetic engineering. Microorganisms with predetermined properties to obtain specific substances. Using bacteria to build a biological computer. Brain-driven prostheses that turn people into cyborg from fantastic books. Medicinal substances that are essentially nanorobots, like bispecific antibodies, “chaining” T-killer to an infected cell ... And no colors for you. Or wait? ..
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Bionic climate control in the "smart home".
In fact, my dear scientific field is becoming more and more real with the invention of organic (plastic) electronics in the 2000th year. It moves by leaps and bounds, trying to taste different areas of traditional electronics. This fall, finally, the first conductors of the PEDOT polymer sprouted in a living organism (rose), creating a complete electrical circuit that changes the color of the leaves from green to blue-green depending on the voltage. There was already an article about this , although not too extensive (and here is the original source ).
This is how the polymer “wire” is embedded in the vessels of the plant.
Prospects of technology are impressive: remote “wiretap” of agricultural plants; live sensors; direct removal of electricity, which is formed in the process of photosynthesis, without damaging the plants themselves; various medical devices for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases ...
There are several more examples of “partial” use of plants in technology, for example, embedding cell membranes into electronic devices for creating sensors or creating artificial muscles based on dried onion peels .
Tweezers of onion artificial muscles. Using drying after freezing, the researchers removed the water, then placed the film in a solution of sulfuric acid to make it more elastic. After that, they covered it with a layer of gold and attached an electrode. Perhaps soon this solution will be tried in “flexible” robotics .
The introduction of artificial organs, the creation of artificial tissues, chips in the brain of rats and in the human body have already become an everyday reality, and the leaves of a flower that change color are exotic. Between the appearance of electrically conductive plastic and an attempt to somehow apply it to the plant, 15 years have passed, in the PEDOT technique, as soon as they do not use it already, but here is the lag. Why is it that cyborgization of animals — seemingly more complex organisms — is so ahead of the cyborgization of plants? Several factors came together here.
Medicine became the engine of bionics and biotechnology in the animal kingdom. This industry can afford even non-paying research. In addition, you can work with one type of creature, and then transfer (though not always, naturally) these results to another. In addition, knowledge about the metabolism of humans and experimental animals accumulate for decades, and some - for centuries, in plants, it is usually not the process that matters, but the result, and information is collected mainly about the phenotype and the fruits in particular.
The Biomechatronics Group team from MIT Media Lab is studying the work of the muscles for prosthetic management.
Slow metabolism and long plant growth slow down the experiments for months and years: Mendel once, for example, spent his whole life on one single job, and this he watched for one-year peas, and not for oak, which begins to bear fruit in fifty years. The pace of modern life makes experiments with plants much less popular and attractive for researchers involved in the “race of publications”.
For a long time, then, the idea of a musical instrument, whose wooden resonator made current conductors in some of its vessels make me sound, did not give me rest. The properties of such an instrument would change in the course of its life cycle, and only after the death and drying of the tree would he acquire a complete sound portrait. Undoubtedly, the cultivation of singing trees would be an art no less subtle and versatile than bonsai, and some gardeners would spend dozens of years creating very unusual tools, which they would then call by their name, like Stradivarius violins ... -organ, combining the properties of the building, plants and musical instrument. But mass production does not smell here, and what cannot be produced and sold en masse simply will not receive grants for development in our age of applied science.
And this is how you can get music from bonsai on the modern level of technology.
Another problem is the lack of developed universal “non-killing intervention” methods. Not all plants allow even a banal inoculation, each species has its own physiological processes and procedures that it can withstand. But the development of some technology for spruce, if it cannot be applied on apricot, is a dead end, it is rational only at the stage of the final implementation of an already working idea. Surprisingly, the formation of ordinary wood was studied on living plants only in 2015, and for this, scientists had to genetically design and grow “plants inside out” in which a secondary cell wall began to form in the surface layer of cells - the main component of wood - which is usually the most inner layer of the cell wall.
Diagram of the structure of the membranes of an ordinary, not inverted plant cell.
The idea of “sprouting”, rather than “stitching” electronics, more organic to plants, comes up against the individuality of the structure of the body, because the genome is not a form for casting identical copies, but rather, instructions for making in verses. Accordingly, each “grown” sample of the device will also be an individual, and this is more art than science, and requires different approaches and a different mindset.
In general, nothing predicts the avalanche-like growth of the invention and the use of plant bionic devices. But the first cyber sprouts are already there, backward areas of science are gradually pulling in to the general mass, and I am glad about every bit of information on this topic.
Applications of this imaginary technology were everywhere. For example, to grow a house of woven trees with proper patience can be done now, but to force a door from living branches to move apart according to the owner’s voice is not so easy. I think you all saw the concept of a flexible smartphone , which moves due to the alloy with the effect of memorizing the form - nothing prevents to introduce something similar at the growth stage into the plant and then make it move at its discretion. You can teach wicker furniture to adapt to the seated posture; use live indoor plants to monitor and automatically adjust indoor environment conditions; create live document cases opening in response to strictly defined environmental conditions, specific stimuli, or simply after a specified period. But what does this all have to do with real, modern biotechnology and bioengineering?
Now everyone has heard about science news, biomedical technologies and genetic engineering. Microorganisms with predetermined properties to obtain specific substances. Using bacteria to build a biological computer. Brain-driven prostheses that turn people into cyborg from fantastic books. Medicinal substances that are essentially nanorobots, like bispecific antibodies, “chaining” T-killer to an infected cell ... And no colors for you. Or wait? ..
')
Bionic climate control in the "smart home".
In fact, my dear scientific field is becoming more and more real with the invention of organic (plastic) electronics in the 2000th year. It moves by leaps and bounds, trying to taste different areas of traditional electronics. This fall, finally, the first conductors of the PEDOT polymer sprouted in a living organism (rose), creating a complete electrical circuit that changes the color of the leaves from green to blue-green depending on the voltage. There was already an article about this , although not too extensive (and here is the original source ).
This is how the polymer “wire” is embedded in the vessels of the plant.
Prospects of technology are impressive: remote “wiretap” of agricultural plants; live sensors; direct removal of electricity, which is formed in the process of photosynthesis, without damaging the plants themselves; various medical devices for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases ...
There are several more examples of “partial” use of plants in technology, for example, embedding cell membranes into electronic devices for creating sensors or creating artificial muscles based on dried onion peels .
Tweezers of onion artificial muscles. Using drying after freezing, the researchers removed the water, then placed the film in a solution of sulfuric acid to make it more elastic. After that, they covered it with a layer of gold and attached an electrode. Perhaps soon this solution will be tried in “flexible” robotics .
The introduction of artificial organs, the creation of artificial tissues, chips in the brain of rats and in the human body have already become an everyday reality, and the leaves of a flower that change color are exotic. Between the appearance of electrically conductive plastic and an attempt to somehow apply it to the plant, 15 years have passed, in the PEDOT technique, as soon as they do not use it already, but here is the lag. Why is it that cyborgization of animals — seemingly more complex organisms — is so ahead of the cyborgization of plants? Several factors came together here.
Medicine became the engine of bionics and biotechnology in the animal kingdom. This industry can afford even non-paying research. In addition, you can work with one type of creature, and then transfer (though not always, naturally) these results to another. In addition, knowledge about the metabolism of humans and experimental animals accumulate for decades, and some - for centuries, in plants, it is usually not the process that matters, but the result, and information is collected mainly about the phenotype and the fruits in particular.
The Biomechatronics Group team from MIT Media Lab is studying the work of the muscles for prosthetic management.
Slow metabolism and long plant growth slow down the experiments for months and years: Mendel once, for example, spent his whole life on one single job, and this he watched for one-year peas, and not for oak, which begins to bear fruit in fifty years. The pace of modern life makes experiments with plants much less popular and attractive for researchers involved in the “race of publications”.
For a long time, then, the idea of a musical instrument, whose wooden resonator made current conductors in some of its vessels make me sound, did not give me rest. The properties of such an instrument would change in the course of its life cycle, and only after the death and drying of the tree would he acquire a complete sound portrait. Undoubtedly, the cultivation of singing trees would be an art no less subtle and versatile than bonsai, and some gardeners would spend dozens of years creating very unusual tools, which they would then call by their name, like Stradivarius violins ... -organ, combining the properties of the building, plants and musical instrument. But mass production does not smell here, and what cannot be produced and sold en masse simply will not receive grants for development in our age of applied science.
And this is how you can get music from bonsai on the modern level of technology.
Another problem is the lack of developed universal “non-killing intervention” methods. Not all plants allow even a banal inoculation, each species has its own physiological processes and procedures that it can withstand. But the development of some technology for spruce, if it cannot be applied on apricot, is a dead end, it is rational only at the stage of the final implementation of an already working idea. Surprisingly, the formation of ordinary wood was studied on living plants only in 2015, and for this, scientists had to genetically design and grow “plants inside out” in which a secondary cell wall began to form in the surface layer of cells - the main component of wood - which is usually the most inner layer of the cell wall.
Diagram of the structure of the membranes of an ordinary, not inverted plant cell.
The idea of “sprouting”, rather than “stitching” electronics, more organic to plants, comes up against the individuality of the structure of the body, because the genome is not a form for casting identical copies, but rather, instructions for making in verses. Accordingly, each “grown” sample of the device will also be an individual, and this is more art than science, and requires different approaches and a different mindset.
In general, nothing predicts the avalanche-like growth of the invention and the use of plant bionic devices. But the first cyber sprouts are already there, backward areas of science are gradually pulling in to the general mass, and I am glad about every bit of information on this topic.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/371843/
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