NER: Self-Coordinating Bacterial Flagella as Actuators in Engineered Fluidic Systems

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Proposal Number: CTS-0508349Principal Investigator: Breuer, Kenneth S.Affiliation: Brown UniversityProposal Title: NER: Self-Coordinating Bacterial Flagella as Actuators in Engineered Fluidic SystemsThis grant is to fund an exploratory research program to expand recent preliminary experimental results that demonstrate the use of nanoscale biomolecular motors (bacterial flagellar motors) as fluidic actuators (pumps and mixers) in practical microfluidic systems. This research program will demonstrate that fluidic devices based on the collective rotation of bacterial flagella are feasible and will illustrate key concepts that can be used to explain and optimize their cooperative behavior. A variety of innovative experimental techniques will be employed to determine the underlying physics behind the observation that coordinated fluid motion (pumping and mixing) can arise from the self-organization of millions of independent nanoscale actuators. The dependence on the geometry, structural and fluid dynamics of the nanoscale acutators will be investigated as well how their coorperative behavior depends on global conditions such as temperature and geometry. Models for the dynamics of this multi-scale system will be developed to describe this behavior. The fundamental scientific issues addressed in this grant include (a) The use of biological nanoscale structures in engineered systems, (b) the physics that allow thousands of nanometer-scale components to self-organize over scales thousands of times larger (millimeters) resulting in global fluid motion and the generation of useful mechanical work and (c) the behavior of such systems on local and global parameters. There has been a longstanding need for compact, organically-powered fluidic actuators that are based on biomolecular motors. This grant will enable critical understanding of the underlying mechanisms, the capabilities and limitations of these systems and to lay the groundwork for future scientific and engineering development. Beyond the contributions to basic science, the program will also help train scientists and engineers in the multidisciplinary field of biophysics, bio-mechanical engineering and in modern experimental techniques at the interface between engineering, biology and physics. The ability to build these nanomachines will allow the construction of compact and self-powered fluid systems and will be also be relevant in a wide variety of lab on a chip and nanoscale mechanical applications. The PI will participate in the Brown University Leadership Alliance program and will recruit students for summer work via the Summer Research Early Identification Program.