April 19, 2011 | David F. Coppedge

Biomimetics: Who Is Imitating Whom?

Biomimetics is a cutting-edge branch of applied science that looks for ways to imitate nature to solve engineering problems.  Sometimes, though engineers invent things then find that nature had a similar solution all along.  Other times, there is overlap, with engineers inventing things that affect nature, or nature guiding engineering that is already in progress.  And sometimes nature and the human body merge with solutions from nature for health’s sake.

  1. Using chance by design:  Humans invented computers without help from nature, but inventors are looking over their shoulder at bacteria and viruses for ways to improve them.  Computer chips are getting so small they are approaching the nanotechnology threshold – the size range of DNA molecules.  As size decreases, thermal noise and randomness become bigger issues for inventors.  What is it about viruses and bacteria that allow them to thrive in the noise?
        “By striving for control and perfection in everything from computer chips to commercial jets, scientists and engineers actually exclude a fundamental force that allows nature to outperform even their best efforts,” a press release from Oak Ridge National Laboratory began.  “Although it may appear to defy logic, imperfections and the seemingly [sic] randomness among even the lowly bacteria help keep nature a couple of steps ahead according to Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Peter Cummings and Mike Simpson, co-authors of a paper published in ACS Nano.”
        Through a strategy of “contrarian bets”, bacteria and viruses explore opportunities in the noise to evade man’s strict on-and-off logic.  Human logic requires more and more power to get rid of the noise by brute force, because engineers want their computer chips to be perfectly predictable.  “In contrast to the computer chip, the bacterial cell has imperfect chance-ridden switches, and through these imperfections, the bacteria can do things the computer chip cannot.”
        So maybe it’s time to rethink our designs by imitating the ways of the “lowly bacteria.”  After all, as the headline read, “Nature still sets standard for nanoscience revolution.”
  2. Sea squirt rejection:  Organ rejection is a major problem for transplant operations.  Can the lowly sea squirt help?  Scientists at UC Santa Barbara are asking, because they have noticed that sea squirts colonizing next to one another are able to recognize self or non-self and fuse safely if related.  Researchers think if we could imitate the sea squirt’s method of recognition and manipulate it, we might be able to help more patients accept organs from others.
  3. Ant Facebook:  Ants “friend” each other just like people do with Facebook.  They build social networks that extend out into hubs of connections, using chemical signals instead of texting.  That’s what researchers at Stanford University found out, according to PhysOrg, when studying red harvester ants in the southwestern desert.
        Like people, some ants appear more popular than others.  “On average, each ant had around 40 interactions,” the scientists found.  “However, around 10 percent of the ants made more than 100 contacts with other ants.”  Apparently ants and humans have hit on this strategy independently.  The research can be found on the Royal Society interface.
  4. Catalytic converters:  Science Daily reported that researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology are working to “develop biologically-inspired catalysts.”  Motivated by how heme enzymes do it, they are looking into “the replacement of carbon-hydrogen bonds with a combination of aromatic and aliphatic carbon-fluorine bonds.”
        This ability would help “sweeten” petroleum products “by the transformation of smelly and corrosive thiols into disulfides.”  Work by this team “was of great interest to the fragrance industry.”

Humans are a part of nature, yet apart of nature in the sense of studying it as an object.  While animals may employ strategies such as mimicry to attract mates or escape predators, only humans study nature with a designer’s mind, looking for designs and seeking to learn the design principles and how they might be applied in radically different ways.

Anybody see Charlie around?

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