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BIONIC DESIGN
Bionic Design Group
Research Period: Fiscal 1992-1997 (6 years)
AIST Special Research Program
(International Basic Research)
Biopolymer molecules such as protein and saccharide, and inorganic substances in a living body such as hydroxyapatite recognize each other and make molecular assembly to form a functional hierarchical structure. The objective of the bionic design research is to elucidate the recognition and binding function of biomolecules in a living body and to reconstruct a part of biological structure such as hard tissue, soft tissue and muscle by using self-organizing mechanism of biomolecules with extremely high efficiency in energy consumption. We have so far created an artificial tissue by the method of cell and tissue engineering, elucidated the function of biomotor protein and analyzed the structural stability of peptide and protein complex.
”Research Outline
The Activities of Bionic Design Research Group can be classified into the two main research groups, namely Tissue Engineering and Molecular Machine, as follows.
The hard tissue group clarifies the process of bone restructuring under mechanical stress, with the culture of rat bone marrow and osteoclast-like cells derived from an identified cell line of mouse, by using atomic force microscope and confocal microscope. Additionally, the synthesis of hydroxyapatite, one of bone substrate components, is studied for the purpose of realizing artificial bone.
It has been found, that the porosity affects the in vivo tissue healing (tissue organization) and improved porosity results in better organization. Regeneration process of vessel walls, liver and bone, using living tissue and cells are studied to know about the living system more precisely and construct the hybrid organs. For artificial vitreous body, the applicability of PVA hydrogel prepared by irradiation gamma has been demonstrated histochemically.
One of the goals is to clarify the muscular function at the molecular level. It is attempted to identify whether contractile force is generated by the interaction between muscle protein and water molecules or by the tilting motion of muscle protein, by using microwave, gene engineering, and so on.
Another goal is the basic research for building up a micro machine combining these molecules, through the development of molecular assembling on the basis of molecular recognition and binding of protein molecules. A peptide chain with hydrophobic and hydrophilic groups arranged alternately has been successfully synthesized as the first step for the creation of self-organizing function.
”Results in Fiscal Year
PjTissue Engineering
In cellular and tissue engineering researches, we found a new chemotaxis interaction between vascular endothelial cell and smooth muscle cell, and also found that the phospholipase-IP3-Ca is one of the signal transduction routes of mechanical stresses such as a stretching by blood pressure. Hepatocyte cells proliferated well on porous ePTFE grafts which can be easily extended to hybrid artificial organ.
QjBiomaterials
Atmospheric Glow Discharge Treatment is found to be very effective and versatile method to modify surfaces of biomaterials to enhance antithrombogenecity and tissue compatibility. We first demonstrated that hydroxyapatite crystal, a bone mineral, grew by a calcium phosphate cluster unit 0.8 nm in size.
RjMolecular Motor
With respect to molecular motor, we made mutant myosins that have different neck lengths by molecular genetic method and proved that the force is generated by the swinging of the neck domain of myosin.
SjMolecular Construction
an artificial photosynthetic molecular system was constructed on liposome
with organization of photosynthetic reaction centers and chlorophyll molecule.s
