Controlled Bacterial Micro-actuation

The integration and exploitation of biological components onto micronanorobots and modern engineered microsystems such as Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS), lab-on-a-chip, or Micro-Total-Analysis Systems (μTAS) offer new possibilities. In particular, the flagellar motor found in many bacteria is a compact and extremely effective biological micro-actuator that is presently impossible to match with modern engineering techniques while requiring no electrical power to operate, a significant advantage especially in the conception of untethered microsystems. Previously, because chemotaxis-based bacteria such as E. Coli have been used for the exploitation of the flagellar motor, the number of possible applications have been very limited due to the absence of an effective method to control the motion of the bacteria. Controlling the direction of propulsion of the flagellar motor with computer software is demonstrated by exploiting magnetotaxis inherent in Magnetotactic Bacteria (MTB). The possibilities and advantages of this method are shown through a simple experiment where the controlled manipulation of microbeads is performed by MTB.