Self-propelled polymers: Powered by ATP, the biological motor protein kinesin makes microtubles move around and aggregate into bundles.
Image: Sanchez et al., Nature
Using biological building blocks found inside a living cell, researchers have created a material that moves itself.
The researchers first made a gel comprising microtubules — stiff polymer filaments that, in living cells, act as guiding tracks for kinesin, a ‘motor protein’ that is propelled along the microtubule cables by the cellular fuel ATP. “It’s like a tyre,” says Zvonimir Dogic, a physicist at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, who led the study. Adding a small polymer to the mix encouraged the microtubules to form bundles and create a moving network. Water droplets containing this gel move continuously — in an oil emulsion and on flat surfaces — without external force, the researchers found.
Each molecule of ATP propels a kinesin molecule 8 nanometers forward along the microtubule track. With thousands of kinesins rumbling along multiple microtubules, a droplet that is 100 micrometers across spontaneously begins rolling when it touches a flat surface.
“It’s a startling advance because of the macro-scale movement that it produces,” says Raymond Goldstein, a biological physicist at the University of Cambridge, UK.
In a series of videos, such as the ones above and below, Dogic and his team recorded the cyclic stages through which microtubule bundles grow, bend, buckle, break and grow again. They also found that the rate at which the fluids moved increased with increasing concentrations of ATP.
Theoretical physicists and biochemists who study such ‘active fluids’ are enchanted by the creation of a comparatively simple, real-life system on which to test the theories which they have largely confined to simulations, though some experimental model systems do exist. Sriram Ramaswamy, a physicist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Hyderabad, India, expects that as other experimentalists build on the Dogic team’s work, this new system will support theoretical ideas about active fluids and might even “do things that we theorists hadn’t anticipated”.
This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on November 7, 2012.
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4 Comments
Add CommentVery misleading title seems to imply perpetual motion is possible. All you have is the normal motion observed in colloids and if ATP is consumed in the process, well then a car burning petrol will also fit the bill. How about Iron oxidises continuously without external force.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe: "Using biological building blocks found inside a living cell, researchers have created a material that moves itself."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems to me, from the description of the experiment (as well as the title of the article), the material only "moves itself" because of laboratory manipulation. Following the hyperlink, "created a material," seems to provide further substantiation:
"...[S]tarting from extensile microtubule bundles, we hierarchically assemble
far-from-equilibrium analogues of conventional polymer gels, liquid crystals and emulsions."
What is the chance of this happening without human intervention?
Bill, I agree. We haven't created anything. Just re-arranged Nature and used the ATP motor juice that already powers all our cells. As usual we are employing Nature's abundant wonders. Next they'll be mutating bacteria flagella to power intravenous cameras!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCigarshaped,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe: "Next they'll be mutating bacteria flagella to power intravenous cameras!"
That would be interesting indeed!