A miniature antenna can transmit data from inside cells without using damaging microwaves
When Deblina Sarkar wanted to name her lab’s new creation the “Cell Rover,” her students were hesitant. “They were like, ‘it seems too cool for a scientific technology,’” she says. But Sarkar, a nanotechnologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wanted the tiny device’s name to evoke exploration of unknown worlds. This rover, however, will roam the inside of a living cell rather than the surface of a planet.
Sarkar and her team machined their experimental antenna from a “magnetostrictive” material—one that changes shape when exposed to a magnetic field. The researchers chose a widely available alloy of iron, nickel, boron and molybdenum, a combination already used in other kinds of sensors.
The researchers first tested the Cell Rover in air and water, and they found that the antenna’s frequency of operation was 10,000 times smaller than that of an equivalent electromagnetic antenna—low enough to avoid killing live cells. Next the team tested the device within a living system: the egg cell of the African clawed frog, a model organism. Since the Cell Rover was made from a magnetic material, the researchers could use a magnet to pull it into each test cell.
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