Publication on bacteria-inspired nanorobots

JD and Mehdi, in collaboration with Jamel Ali and MinJun Kim’s group at Southern Methodist University, have published a new paper describing artificial bacteria-inspired nanorobots.  The nanorobots consist of a magnetic nanobead to which is attached one or two reconstituted bacterial flagella.  The swimming speeds of the robots can be altered by triggering polymorphic transformations in the flagella, and nanorobots with multiple flagella display bundling-like behavior. [J. Ali, U. K. Cheang, J. D. Martindale, M. Jabbarzadeh, H. C. Fu, and M. J. Kim. “Bacteria-inspired nanorobots with flagellar polymorphic transformations and bundling.” Scientific Reports 7, 14098 (2017). pdf ]