Effect of actuating cell source on locomotion of organic living machines with electrocompacted collagen skeleton

In robotics, there is a need for small scale, compliant actuators for use in medical applications or minimally invasive environmental monitoring. Biohybrid devices offer one solution to this need by using muscle cells to actuate compliant scaffolds. Such devices typically use biocompatible synthetic polymers as compliant scaffolds, which require additional processing steps to promote cellular alignment and attachment. Instead, electrocompacted and aligned collagen (ELAC) can be used as a completely organic scaffold, requiring no additional processing steps, with alignment being innately promoted by the topography. Locomotive living machines have been fabricated in this study using ELAC scaffolds. Devices have been produced using either primary cardiomyocytes or primary skeletal muscle cells isolated from chick embryos as actuators. When tested under the same conditions, skeletal muscle cell powered devices were approximately an order of magnitude faster, having a mean velocity of 77.6 ± 86.4 μm min(-1), compared to 9.34 ± 6.69 μm min(-1) for cardiomyocyte powered devices. In conclusion, completely organic living machines have been fabricated using electrocompacted collagen skeletons, and it was found that skeletal muscle powered devices were significantly faster than cardiomyocyte powered devices.