{"id":221953,"date":"2025-09-16T07:06:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T12:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/biohybrid-crawlers-can-be-controlled-using-optogenetic-techniques"},"modified":"2025-09-16T07:06:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T12:06:11","slug":"biohybrid-crawlers-can-be-controlled-using-optogenetic-techniques","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/biohybrid-crawlers-can-be-controlled-using-optogenetic-techniques","title":{"rendered":"Biohybrid crawlers can be controlled using optogenetic techniques"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/biohybrid-crawlers-can-be-controlled-using-optogenetic-techniques.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The body movements performed by humans and other animals are known to be supported by several intricate biological and neural mechanisms. While roboticists have been trying to develop systems that emulate these mechanisms for decades, the processes driving these systems\u2019 motions remain very different.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern University and other institutes recently developed new biohybrid robots that combine living cells from mice with 3D printed hydrogel structures with wireless optoelectronics.<\/p>\n<p>These robots, presented in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/scirobotics.adu5830\" target=\"_blank\">paper<\/a> published in <i>Science Robotics<\/i>, have <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/neuromuscular+junctions\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">neuromuscular junctions<\/a> where the neurons can be controlled using optogenetic techniques, emulating the <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/neural+mechanisms\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">neural mechanisms<\/a> that support human movements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The body movements performed by humans and other animals are known to be supported by several intricate biological and neural mechanisms. While roboticists have been trying to develop systems that emulate these mechanisms for decades, the processes driving these systems\u2019 motions remain very different. Researchers at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern University and other [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1489,3,412,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3d-printing","category-biological","category-genetics","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}