Construction of mechano-bionic system using an environmentally robust insect muscle tissue

Here we present an environmentally robust mechano-bionic system using insect dorsal vessel tissues. Although mechano-bionic systems using mammalian heart muscle cells were reported previously, these mechano-bionic systems require precise environmental control to keep the heart muscle cells contracting spontaneously. To overcome this problem, our group focused on insect dorsal vessel tissues as a novel driving source of mechano-bionic system. We have shown so far that insect dorsal vessel can be utilized as driving source that is robust over culture conditions. In this paper, as a mechano-bionic system that is robust over its operating environment, we propose a micro-actuated system that consists of insect dorsal vessel and mechanical structure fabricated by micro fabrication technology. By photolithographic technique, the components of the machine were fabricated. The excised dorsal vessel was attached to the microstructure by tweezers under the stereomicroscope. The micro-mechanical components with dorsal vessel was incubated at 25°C, and after several hours of culture, it was actuated by contraction of dorsal vessel. Using image analysis, its maximum open-end displacement and operating frequency was measured around 27µm and 0.5Hz, respectively. We successfully demonstrated in constructing the mechano-bionic system that is robust over its operating environment.