University researcher Rashid Bashir’s “bio-bot” only moves at a top speed that spans the width of three human hairs each second, but the part-robot, part-heart-cell hybrid could move the emerging field of synthetic biology further into the future.

The 7-millimeter-long robot was made using a 3-D printer out of materials similar to those in contact lenses. The bio-bot combines biology and engineering by having a mechanical structure that is propelled by the beating of cardiac cells from rats. Project leader Bashir, University professor of bioengineering and electrical and computer engineering, said the team’s long-term goal is to develop a multicellular structure that is capable of doing more than any individual cell can.

“The eventual goal is to try to integrate multiple cell types so can we think about neurons and muscle cells and other types of cells (to) really think about building systems that start to mimic little organisms that we can fabricate,” Bashir said.

Vincent Chan, graduate student in Engineering, designed the bio-bot with Bashir. Chan wrote a manuscript for the project, which was published in the online journal Scientific Reports on Nov. 15. Chan said he and his team explored a mostly uncharted area of biological engineering — synthetic biology.

“Traditionally, bioengineering is more, for example, developing medical devices doctors can use to help their patients. … We are going in a little different direction,” Chan said. “Now we are taking biology and using it for new functions that aren’t really present in nature right now. We’re using it to kind of improve nature.”

Bashir said multicellular bio-bots can potentially be used as mimics for organs, for drug screening and also as a way to detoxify fluids.

The team is part of the National Science Foundation Science and Technology Centers’ organization and received support for the project through a $25 million grant from the foundation, Chan said. It was distributed among the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology and University in hopes that teams from these schools would eventually develop multicellular structures.

“Other groups across other schools are working on different parts of the bio-bots, from the cell source to the cell-cell interactions to design of the bio-bot,” Chan said in an email. “We have worked closely with them to use their expertise in our current bio-bot designs and plan to integrate many of their work into our future bio-bot designs.”

Austin can be reached [email protected].