Analogous to algae: Scientists move toward engineering living matter by manipulating movement of microparticles

Date:
July 13, 2023
Source:
New York University
Summary:
A team of scientists has devised a system that replicates the
movement of naturally occurring phenomena, such as hurricanes and
algae, using laser beams and the spinning of microscopic rotors.


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FULL STORY ==========================================================================
A team of scientists has devised a system that replicates the movement
of naturally occurring phenomena, such as hurricanes and algae, using
laser beams and the spinning of microscopic rotors.

The breakthrough, reported in the journal Nature Communications, reveals
new ways that living matter can be reproduced on a cellular scale.

"Living organisms are made of materials that actively pump energy through
their molecules, which produce a range of movements on a larger cellular scale," explains Matan Yah Ben Zion, a doctoral student in New York University's Department of Physics at the time of the work and one of
the paper's authors.

"By engineering cellular-scale machines from the ground up, our work
can offer new insights into the complexity of the natural world."
The research centers on vortical flows, which appear in both biological
and meteorological systems, such as algae or hurricanes. Specifically, particles move into orbital motion in the flow generated by their own
rotation, resulting in a range of complex interactions.

To better understand these dynamics, the paper's authors, who also
included Alvin Modin, an NYU undergraduate at the time of the study and
now a doctoral student at Johns Hopkins University, and Paul Chaikin,
an NYU physics professor, sought to replicate them at their most basic
level. To do so, they created tiny micro-rotors -- about 1/10th the width
of a strand of human hair - - to move micro-particles using a laser beam (Chaikin and his colleagues devised this process in a previous work).

The researchers found that the rotating particles mutually affected
each other into orbital motion, with striking similarities to dynamics
observed by other scientists in "dancing" algae -- algae groupings that
move in concert with each other.

In addition, the NYU team found that the spins of the particles
reciprocate as the particles orbit.

"The spins of the synthetic particles reciprocate in the same
fashion as that observed in algae -- in contrast to previous work
with artificial micro- rotors," explains Ben Zion, now a researcher
at Tel Aviv University. "So we were able to reproduce synthetically --
and on the micron scale -- an effect that is seen in living systems." "Collectively, these findings suggest that the dance of algae can be
reproduced in a synthetic system, better establishing our understanding
of living matter," he adds.

The research was supported by grants from the Department of Energy (DE- SC0007991, SC0020976).

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Story Source: Materials provided by New_York_University. Note: Content
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========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Alvin Modin, Matan Yah Ben Zion, Paul M. Chaikin. Hydrodynamic
spin-orbit
coupling in asynchronous optically driven micro-rotors. Nature
Communications, 2023; 14 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-39582-3 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/07/230713142052.htm

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