| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
Real Life Mad Science Blobs are only 100 micrometers across . . . for now
From
New Scientist – Creating drops of the active gel about 30 to 100 micrometres across resulted in something akin to cells that crawled across a microscope slide. “It mimics a little bit what might happen in a living system,” Marchetti says. But the researchers can control how their artificial cells behave. Adjusting the amount of ATP dictates how long the drops stay in motion, while changing the concentration of tubes affects the way they churn.
The key to making the blob mobile was to add nanometre-sized polymers to the solution, which helped draw the tubes into bundles. A motor protein could then span the tight spaces between tubes and cause them to slide past each other in opposite directions. When Dogic and colleagues crammed enough tubes in a small space, they flowed and churned in patterns that resemble a Van Gogh painting in motion.
Active microtubule networks exhibit internally generated flows
Nature – Spontaneous motion in hierarchically assembled active matter
See more and subscribe to NextBigFuture at 2012-11-09 01:23:12 Source: http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/11/real-life-mad-science-blobs-are-only.html
Source:
