Tiny motors set to motion in live human cells

“As these nanomotors move around and bump into structures inside the cells, the live cells show internal mechanical responses that no one has seen before,” said Tom Mallouk, Evan Pugh Professor of Materials Chemistry and Physics at Penn State. The findings were published in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition on Monday.

“Our first-generation motors required toxic fuels and they would not move in biological fluid, so we couldn't study them in human cells,” Mallouk said. “That limitation was a serious problem.”

Then the research team made a breakthrough by discovering that the ‘tiny rockets’ could be powered by ultrasonic waves.

Using low ultrasonic power the nanomotors have little effect on the cells, however when the power is increased they start actively moving “bumping into organelles – structures within a cell that perform specific functions,” Mallouk explained.

“The nanometers can act as egg beaters to essentially homogenize the cell's contents, or they can act as battering rams to actually puncture the cell membrane,” according to the press release.