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BIOMIMETIC MICROROBOTICS

Delivering microcargo with artificial microtubules

Nature Machine Intelligence volume 4, pages 663–664 (2022)Cite this article

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Directed, active transport of cargo is essential for life on all length scales. A new system of artificial microtubules — consisting of a fibre with an embedded periodic array of magnetic inclusions — provides controlled active transport of microcargo by a rotating magnetic field, even under adverse flow conditions.

The controlled transport of microcargos poses major challenges, such as how to beat the low efficiency of diffusive transport, how to employ active processes effectively, how to overcome the limitations due to thermal noise, how to switch transport on and off as needed, how to control the transport direction, and how to cope with complex environments and confined spaces. Nature has evolutionarily developed a large variety of intelligent solutions to move cargo around at the level of biological cells. On the subcellular level, this is mostly achieved by motor proteins, which pull microcargo unidirectionally along the cellular highways that are established by microtubules, which are long and stiff polar filaments within the cell. On the cellular level, propulsion and transport is mostly achieved by the active motion of flagella and cilia, or by active body deformation. Here, eukaryotic flagella and cilia generate propulsion by a snake-like travelling bending wave, while prokaryotic flagella are helical and generate propulsion by a rotational motion that is induced by a rotary motor in the cell wall. Inspired by cytoskeletal motors that carry vesicles along microtubule highways in biological cells, Hongri Gu et al.1 have developed an artificial microtubule (AMT), a structured microfibre with embedded micromagnets that serve as stepping stones to guide particles rapidly through flow networks.

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Fig. 1: Transport along natural and artificial microtubules.

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  1. Theoretical Physics of Living Matter, Institute of Biological Information Processing and Institute for Advanced Simulation, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany

    Gerhard Gompper

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  1. Gerhard Gompper
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Correspondence to Gerhard Gompper.

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Gompper, G. Delivering microcargo with artificial microtubules. Nat Mach Intell 4, 663–664 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-022-00521-4

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