The Gobbo Group has made an exciting advance in the creation of life-like, light-responsive artificial tissues, that we called photonastic prototissues. Inspired by how real tissues convert energy into motion and function, we engineered synthetic tissue-like materials that can contract and switch off internal reactions when exposed to light.
This work, now published in Advanced Materials, was developed in collaboration with Prof.s Piero Pavan and Silvia Todros (Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Padova; Tissue Engineering Lab, Fondazione Istituto di Ricerca Pediatrica Città della Speranza).
The research was supported by by European Research Council (ERC Starting Grant PROTOMAT, 101039578), the European Union Next Generation EU (project PRIN PNRR 3D-L- INKED, P2022BLNCS; project PRIN SAMBA 2022285HC5_002; project PNRR “Metabolic and cardiovascular diseases”CN00000041), and by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship project “SAPTiMeC” (101023978).
The secret behind these dynamic prototissues lies in the combination of two elements: gold nanoparticles that convert light into heat, and a soft, thermoresponsive polymer “proto-cortex”. When irradiated, the gold nanoparticles warm up, triggering the polymer “proto-cortex” to contract. This makes the individual protocell that compose the material to contract just like a tiny muscle. When the light is turned off, the structure relaxes again. The potential of this achievement was then showcased by fabricating a starfish-shaped prototissue whose arms could reversibly bend towards the light source (see video).
Beyond movement, we demonstrated that these contractions can regulate enzyme metabolism inside the tissue by blocking or allowing access to small substrate molecules. In other words, light intensity can be used to cause reversible contractions that can modulate a biochemical process hosted within the material (see scheme).
This work tackles a central challenge in bottom-up synthetic biology: creating artificial tissues that not only mimic the structure of living systems but also integrate movement and biochemical functions. By achieving this combination, we offer a powerful platform for designing materials that don’t just passively exist, but actively react and adapt with potential applications in soft robotics, programmable drug delivery, and bioinspired materials.
Link to the open access article.
The Gobbo Group 