An engineering team from Columbia University have, for the first time, harnessed the molecular machinery
of living systems to provide power for an integrated circuit (IC) from adenosine
triphosphate (ATP), the energy currency of life. They achieved this by
integrating a conventional solid-state complementary
metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) IC with an artificial
lipid bilayer membrane containing ATP-powered ion pumps, opening the
door to creating entirely new artificial systems that contain both
biological and solid-state components. The study, led by Ken Shepard,
Lau Family Professor of Electrical Engineering and professor of
biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering, is published online Dec.
7 in Nature Communications.
"We are excited at the prospect of expanding the palette of active devices that will have new functions, such as harvesting energy from ATP, as was done here, or recognizing specific molecules, giving chips the potential to taste and smell. This was quite a unique new direction for us and it has great potential to give solid-state systems new capabilities with biological components."
ATP, or adenosine triphosphate, is an enzyme in cells responsible for transporting energy from where it is generated to where it is needed. In the prototype biological microchip created by the Columbia team, ATP is generated by a biocell that pumps ions across the lipid membrane to produce an electrical potential that can be harvested by the CMOS integrated circuit.
"We made a macroscale version of this system at the scale of several millimetres to see if it worked," Shepard said. "Our results provide new insight into a generalised circuit model, enabling us to determine the conditions to maximize the efficiency of harnessing chemical energy through the action of these ion pumps. We will now be looking at how to scale the system down."
While other groups have harvested energy from living systems, Shepard and his team are exploring how to do this at the molecular level, isolating just the desired function and interfacing this with electronics. "We don't need the whole cell," he explained. "We just grab the component of the cell that's doing what we want. For this project, we isolated the ATPases because they were the proteins that allowed us to extract energy from ATP." he added.
The ability to build a system that combines the power of solid-state electronics with the capabilities of biological components has great promise. "You need a bomb-sniffing dog now, but if you can take just the part of the dog that is useful - the molecules that are doing the sensing - we wouldn't need the whole animal," said Shepard.
Since ATP is the power source for living creatures, this technology could provide a power source to the systems that are intended to be used in human body such as artificial organs or organ supporting health systems.
Source: https://engineering.columbia.edu/columbia-engineers-build-biologically-powered-chip
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