Nanobots To Use Sperm Engines
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Wednesday, 29 of October , 2008 at 2:30 am
The types of power supplies we’re used to here in the macro world don’t tend to scale down to nanosizes very well. YOU just try building a combustion engine that’ll work in the human blood stream. Even batteries and electric motors have some finite minimum sizes. When it comes to cell sized machines, our bodies have a bunch of clever solutions that researchers are trying to steal, not the least of which are nanobot engines based on sperm.
Why sperm? Well, sperm are energetic little guys. They can swim along at up to 3 mm per minute, which is pretty good considering they’re only about 50 nanometers long, and they’re powered by stuff called ATP, which they make all by themselves from simple sugars. It’s this ability to create and utilize energy that researchers are interested in. Sperm have a bunch of bendy twisty proteins attached to their tails that turn sugar (glucose) into ATP (which is what your body uses to store and release energy), and then get rid of the waste products. This efficient system (it’s called glycolysis) has been successfully duplicated on a chip, and researchers think that these little ATP power supplies could be used to run all kinds of things from propellers to medication pumps.
I’m sorely tempted to end this post with all kinds of inappropriate things, but I’m going to be mature about it and just say that I’m all for this kind of research. As long as they don’t waste any of them.
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Category: Biorobotics, Nano, Research
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