Bacteria take fantastic voyage through bloodstream

18:28 03 May 2009 by Colin Barras

Canadian engineers have sent swimming magnetic bacteria through the bloodstreams of rats. The work is a step towards the team's goal of harnessing them as drug mules steered through human bodies using magnetic fields.

Microscopic machines have proven attractive to medics trying to make treatments ever more targeted and less invasive than surgery. But although it is now possible to make micromachines from individual molecules, providing them with power is another matter.

Propulsion systems or even swimming motions that work at larger scales don't work when scaled down because of the treacly forces that dominate fluids at microscopic scales.

Sylvain Martel's team at the École Polytechnique de Montréal in Canada think tapping the skills of bacteria that have evolved to swim with ease at the microscopic scale is the best solution.

more with video:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17071-bacteria-take-fantastic-voyage-through-bloodstream.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news