Colloidal Shuttles for Programmable Cargo Transport
Cargo transport of molecules within cells is essential for life. Developing synthetic strategies for cargo control in living or inanimate thermal systems could lead to powerful tools to manipulate chemical gradients at the microscale and thus drive processes out of equilibrium to realize work. Researchers from Complex Materials and Institute of Food, Nutrition and Health at ETHZ demonstrated a colloidal analog of the complex biological shuttles responsible for molecular trafficking in cells.
These colloidal shuttles consist of magneto-dielectric particles that are loaded with cargo particles or living cells through size-selective using electrical fields. The loaded colloidal shuttle is transported with magnetic field gradients and cargo is released at the target location by switching off the electrical field. Such spatiotemporal control over the distribution of chemically active cargo can be potentially exploited for fundamental biological research or for the development of novel technologies for advanced cell culturing, drug discovery and medical diagnosis.
- Colloidal shuttles for programmable cargo transport Ahmet F. Demirörs, Fritz Eichenseher, Martin J. Loessner & André R. Studart, Nature Communications, external page DOI:10.1038/s41467-017-01956-9
- Complex Materials
- Ahmet Demirörs