�Imagine an edible ocular sensor that could be placed in produce bags to find harmful levels of bacterium and consumed right on with the veggies. Or an implantable device that would varan glucose in your blood for a year, and then dissolve.
Scientists at Tufts University's School of Engineering have demonstrated for the first time that it is possible to design such "living" optical elements that could enable an entirely new class of sensors. These sensors would combine advanced nanoscale optics with biological readout functions, be biocompatible and biodegradable, and be manufactured and stored at room temperatures without habit of toxic chemicals. The Tufts squad used fibers from silkworms to develop the platform devices.
Tufts University has filed a number of patent applications on silk-based optics and is actively exploring commercialisation opportunities.
"Sophisticated optical devices that ar mechanically rich yet fully biodegradable, biocompatible and implantable don't live today," aforementioned principal investigator Fiorenzo Omenetto, associate professor of biomedical engineering and associate professor of physics. "Such systems would greatly expand the use of current optical technologies in areas like human and livestock health, environmental monitoring and solid food quality."
"For example, at a low-pitched cost, we could potentially put a bioactive silk film in every bag of spinach, and it could hold the consumer a read-out of whether or non E. coli bacteria were in the bag-before the food was consumed," explained David Kaplan, professor and chair of the biomedical engineering department.
The Tufts research was published in a recent paper in "Biomacromolecules" by Brian D. Lawrence, graduate student in biomedical engineering; Mark Cronin-Golomb, associate professor, biomedical technology; Irene Georgakoudi, assistant prof, biomedical engineering; Kaplan, and Omenetto. (hTTP://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/article.
