Keisuke Morishima

Despite attempts in a number of studies to utilize muscle tissue and cells as microactuators, all of the biohybrid microdevices have been operable only in the culture medium and none have worked in air due to the dry environment. This paper demonstrates an atmospheric-operable bioactuator (AOB) fabricated by packaging an insect dorsal vessel (DV) tissue with a small amount of culture medium inside a capsule. The AOB, consisting of microtweezers and the capsule, was designed based on a structural

We present a bioactuator powered by insect dorsal vessel tissue which can work for a long time at room temperature without maintenance. Previously reported bioactuators which exploit contracting ability of mammalian heart muscle cell have required precise environmental control to keep the cell alive and contracting. To overcome this problem, we propose a bioactuator using dorsal vessel tissue. The insect tissue which can grow at room temperature is generally robust over a range of culture condit

Living muscle tissues and cells have been attracting attention as potential actuator candidates. In particular, insect dorsal vessel tissue (DVT) seems to be well suited for a bio-actuator since it is capable of contracting autonomously and the tissue itself and its cells are more environmentally robust under culturing conditions compared with mammalian tissues and cells. Here we demonstrate an autonomously moving polypod microrobot (PMR) powered by DVT excised from an inchworm. We fabricated a

We have developed a living prosthesis consisting of a living muscle-powered device, which is controlled by neuronal signals to recover some of the functions of a lost extremity. A tissue-engineered skeletal muscle was fabricated with two anchorage points from a primary rat myoblast cultured in a collagen Matrigel mixed gel. Differentiation to the skeletal muscle was confirmed in the tissue-engineered skeletal muscle, and the contraction force increased with increasing frequency of electric stimu

This article describes contractile performance and controllability using different stimulation strategies of a bioactuator made from dorsal vessel (DV) tissue harvested from an insect (final stage moth larva). This insect tissue is an excellent bioactuator because of its high robustness; an accurate adjustment of culturing conditions such as temperature and pH necessary for culturing mammalian living tissues and cells is unnecessary for the DV tissue. There are no reports that measure contractil

A porous photopolymerized sol-gel (PSG) monolith was synthesized in the separation channel of a borosilicate glass chip via UV irradiation (5 min) of a mixture of 3-methacryloxypropyltrimethoxysilane, an acid catalyst, a porogen, and a photoinitiator. The PSG monolith adhered strongly to the chemically untreated channel walls. The chip was fabricated using standard lithography procedures to give channels that are 35-μm deep and 90-μm wide. Masking the other channels defined the 4.7-cm PSG sectio

Peristalsis is widely seen in nature, as this pumping action is important in digestive systems for conveying sustenance to every corner of the body. In this paper, we propose a muscle-powered tubular micro pump that provides peristaltic transport. We utilized Drosophila melanogaster larvae that express channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) on the cell membrane of skeletal muscles to obtain light-responsive muscle tissues. The larvae were forced to contract with blue light stimulation. While changing the spe

Bio-actuators that use insect muscular tissue have attracted attention from researchers worldwide because of their small size, self-motive property, self-repairer ability, robustness, and the need for less environment management than mammalian cells. To demonstrate the potential of insect muscular tissue for use as bio-actuators, three types of these robots, a pillar actuator, a walker, and a twizzer, have been designed and fabricated. However, a model of an insect muscular tissue-powered swimmi

We report a convenient method to create a three-dimensional micro-rotational fluidic platform for biological applications in the direction of a vertical plane (out-of-plane) without contact in an open space. Unlike our previous complex fluidic manipulation system, this method uses a micro-rotational flow generated near a single orifice when the solution is pushed from the orifice by using a single pump. The three-dimensional fluidic platform shows good potential for fluidic biological applicatio

In our laboratory, we have developed a mediator-less direct photosynthetic/metabolic bio-fuel cell (DPBFC) in which microparticles of polyaniline were adopted as the electrode material to extract reducing equivalents from bacteria. In this paper, we selected purple photosynthetic bacteria Rhodopesudomonas palustris as a new fuel source which requires organic compounds for photosynthesis and emits hydrogen as a result of nitrogenase activity. To improve the electron generation efficiency of R. pa