Neither Animal Nor Vegetable, But It’s Alive In The Sea

Firstly, the group led by Antonio De Simone, Professor at SISSA, provided a detailed description of this mysterious movement. “We used some microscope videos of those animals and we described their movement quantitatively, using the method of statistical learning”, explained De Simone. “Then we used the data to formulate a mathematical model of the movement in which the sliding of the membrane is fundamental”.

“We haven’t yet a direct proof that this protist moves as described by our model, but we have provided a detailed description of a mechanism according to the data we have observed”, clarified De Simone. This work is an example of what scientists call reverse engineering, i.e. design of new technologies starting from observation of nature (Velcro is the most famous example of it, it was devised after observing how some seeds “stick”, such as burdock).

“Just think of all the possible medical applications of micro-robots and micro-cameras able to move inside the human body”, added De Simone. “Studies like this will lay the foundations to develop similar systems, as well as give some answers to biologists on the nature of euglenids and the evolutionary meaning of their way of moving”.

“Sliding motion is the basis of the mechanism hypothesized by SISSA”, clarified Alfred Beran, biologist at OGS (the Italian National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics). “To date we do not have any microscopy technique to observe in vivo the stripes on the membranes of euglenids, but we are working on it, and it is one of our main goals”.

Contacts and sources:
Sissa Medialab

http://intl.pnas.org/content/early/2012/10/08/1213977109.abstract

Citation: M.Arroyo, L. Heltai, D. Milan, and A. DeSimone, “Reverse engineering the euglenoid movement” PNAS October 9, 2012