While E. Coli is found in the stomachs of many living creatures, some enterprising Virginia Tech scientists decided that wasn't enough. They used a colony of the bacteria to power an artificial system. Which is to say: bacteria-powered robotics may now be possible.

Essentially, the robot is powered by gene circuits in the bacteria, altered to give off chemical signals in response to outside stimuli, which helps guide the robot toward a target. The chemical signals come from bioluminescence, meaning that the robot is designed to sense the light from the bacteria.



The team first used computer modeling to determine how the bacteria colony might behave in this environment before building the robot. They refer to the process as "in silico," and it involves sophisticated simulations of E. Coli bacteria. While scientists anticipated some of the results, others took the researchers by surprise. For instance, after certain barriers in the interface between the robot and the synthetic bacteria were removed, the robot exhibited "predatory behavior" when approaching a food source as if stalking its prey, including speeding up when going in for the "kill."

The technology will have implications in bioengineered bacteria meant to clean up pollutants, as well as robots in agriculture to improve overall soil health. It could also lead to medical treatments that use bacteria to deploy treatments. The results were published in Scientific Reports.

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Source: Popular Science

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