Tag: Bioinspiration

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Banding together by Kathy Gillen

Entangled worm blob
Seeking connection with mates
Much like a mosh pit

by Kathy Gillen

In laboratory culture conditions California blackworms huddle together, but why? California blackworms (Lumbriculus variegatus) are widely distributed freshwater annelids that are easy to care for in the lab (1). In the wild these detritivores stick their heads into the muck at the edges of ponds and rivers while their tails extend through the water column for gas exchange. In lab culture consisting of worms in bowls of artificial freshwater, the worms form tangled masses that with a touch from a pipette wriggle apart. This behavior fascinates students and students frequently ask why the worms form knotted blobs.

One explanation for the worm blobs is that lacking a substrate such as mud to stick their heads into, the worms instead burrow into each other. Whether or not this is correct, in worms, as in other animals, aggregating provides benefits. Researchers manipulated blob sizes and found that larger blobs help more worms survive thermal stress in a temperature gradient experiment. And blobs of worms better withstand desiccation stress (2). Additionally the physics of the entangled masses themselves are being examined, research that may pave the way for bioinspired materials with useful new properties (3,4). Long used as model organisms in whole body regeneration and in environmental toxicology studies, the California blackworm continues to provide new research avenues.

Further reading:

  1. ‘It Cuts Both Ways: An Annelid Model System for the Study of Regeneration in the Laboratory and in the Classroom’, 2021, Martinez Acosta, V.G., Arellano-Carbajal, F., Gillen, K., Tweeten, K.A., Zattara, E.E. Front Cell Dev Biol 9, 780422. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcell.2021.780422
  2. ‘Collective dynamics in entangled worm and robot blobs’, 2021, Ozkan-Aydin, Y., Goldman, D.I., Bhamla, M.S. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118, e2010542118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2010542118
  3. ‘Following the entangled state of filaments’, 2023, Panagiotou, E. Science 380, 340–341. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adh4055
  4. ‘Ultrafast reversible self-assembly of living tangled matter’, 2023, Patil, V.P., Tuazon, H., Kaufman, E., Chakrabortty, T., Qin, D., Dunkel, J., Bhamla, M.S. Science 380, 392–398. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ade7759

Author bio:

Kathy Gillen teaches and conducts research at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. Her Kenyon profile can be found here: https://www.kenyon.edu/directory/kathy-gillen/

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Jellyfish by Mike Fainzilber

fifteen elephants
carefully balanced
on columns of fat

by Mike Fainzilber

Believe it or not, this is a haiku about jellyfish – specifically deep-sea jellyfish that live at depths where the water pressure is equivalent to that that would be applied by 15 African elephants piled up on the palm of the reader’s hand. When such jellyfish are brought to the water surface they literally vanish, melting into their surroundings.

Recent research has now shown that this is because the lipids (fat molecules) that make up the membranes of deep-sea jellyfish are specially adapted to form cylindrical structures (required for functional membranes) under extreme pressure. When pressures are reduced, these lipids change shape, causing membranes to curve and disrupt.

These findings are important for our understanding of how life is possible in the deep oceans and perhaps other high-pressure environments. Indeed, the researchers were able to take advantage of the new insights to engineer bacteria for survival under extreme pressures.

Further reading:

‘Homeocurvature adaptation of phospholipids to pressure in deep-sea invertebrates’, 2024, Winnikoff, J.R., et al., Science. Available: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adm7607

‘How jellyfish survive pressures that would crush you into oblivion’, 2024, Cummings, S., Science. Available: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zdvphja

Author bio:

Mike Fainzilber’s day job is a biologist. He began writing haiku and senryu during the pandemic, and this side effect of COVID-19 has not worn off yet. Editors in his two spheres of activity have been known to suggest that he should best restrict his efforts to the other sphere. Find out more about Mike’s research via his lab’s website and connect with him on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/mfainzilber.bsky.social .

Read more sciku by Mike here.

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Hibernation by Joy Stahl

Survival in space
Cold sleep on long missions
Arctic Ground Squirrel

by Joy Stahl

I’m a huge fan of science fiction novels and shows that use hibernation chambers to allow humans to reach distant planets in their lifetime.

I read an article about scientists who are studying arctic squirrels and how they hibernate, to create hibernation solutions for astronauts. Arctic squirrels are super-hibernators . They hibernate over winter for 7 to 9 months, reducing their core body temperature from 37 °C (99 °F) to as low as −2.9 °C (26.8 °F), and yet they manage to retain muscle and bone mass during this extended hibernation. Understanding this remarkable adaptation may help researchers looking at prolonged space travel and may also lead to improved critical and emergency health care and treatments.

Further reading:

‘Arctic squirrels may hold key to helping astronauts survive on long missions’, AccuWeather.com: https://www.accuweather.com/en/space-news/arctic-squirrels-may-help-astronauts-survive-long-missions/1481578

Author bio:

Joy Stahl is a middle school teacher in southwestern Kansas. Her poetry has appeared in Voices of Kansas. Check out Joy’s other sciku ‘1827-2023’!

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Oh ketchup packet!

Oh ketchup packet!

How to get the last sauce out?

Hydrocarbon films!

 

Waste from packaging where food products can’t be completely extracted builds up. Now research by Mukherjee et al (2018) suggests a solution might be at hand. The researchers found that hydrocarbon-based polymer films can be stably impregnated with vegetable oils. The resulting material is slippery and durable, ideal for the inside of packaging to reduce food sticking and waste.

Whilst this sounds high-tech the researchers were actually inspired by the pitcher plant which uses a slippery coating on its leaves to capture visiting insects.

Original research: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-29823-7

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Snakeskin secrets

Learning from nature:

Snakeskin secrets revealing

lessons in friction.

 

The natural world has inspired engineering and design in countless ways. Now researchers are looking at snakeskins in an attempt to better understand an understudied engineering area: friction.

Abdel-Aal (2018) summarises findings from 40 species of snake to understand how the textural traits of snake skin compare to the standard features of textured industrial surfaces. This exploratory framework could subsequently lead to new, nature-inspired smart surfaces.

Original paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmbbm.2017.11.008

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Closing the trap by Dr Hortense Le Ferrand

A feather falling –

hungry inert soul wakes up,

snaps, closing the trap.

The Venus flytrap, Dionaea muscipula, is a carnivorous plant that performs one of the fastest movements in the flora: when an insects touches the hairs inside the leaves of the trap, it closes in a few milliseconds.

Inspired by the plants and its internal microstructure, a team of researchers from ETH Zürich and Purdue University have developed a composite material mimicking the Venus leaf and able to change shape as fast as the plant (Schmied & Le Ferrand et al, 2017).

Thanks to the good match between the theoretical simulations and the experimental results, their method opens new avenues for the creation of autonomous and fast robotic devices.

Original research: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-3190/aa5efd

Dr Hortense Le Ferrand is a postdoctoral fellow at Nanyang Technical University, Singapore. Hortense’s interests are on the fabrication and design of novel materials and systems inspired by nature. Check out her other scku ‘Shrimp molting’ here.