Swedish scientists have managed to develop electrodes in living tissue, in this case in the brain, heart and tail fin of zebrafish. This exceptional discovery opens the way to the integration of biocompatible electronic circuits inside the body to understand and treat nervous diseases in particular.
As we know, the electrodes implanted in the brain can already attenuate certain symptomssymptoms neurological, and they open the way to promising treatments for Parkinson’s disease or AlzheimerAlzheimer. The only obstacle: the connection between the electronic circuit and the biological tissues. Conventional bioelectronics relies on a fixed and static design which complicates its integration into living biological signal systems. Clearly, electronics and living tissue are not compatible!
To remedy this incompatibility, scientists from the universities of Linköping, Lund and Gothenburg have developed a method to dynamically create flexible conductive materials without substratesubstrate in the biological environment. Thanks to this method, it is possible to create soft, substrateless and electronically conductive materials in living tissues. For this, they injected a gelgel composed ofenzymesenzymes used as ” moleculesmolecules of assembly” to grow electrodeselectrodes in biological tissues, in this case of zebrafish and medicinal leeches, but also in food samples (beef, pork, chicken and tofutofu).
A cocktail that triggers the electrical process
More specifically, this gel comprises a oxidaseoxidase to generate hydrogen peroxidehydrogen peroxide on sitea peroxidase to catalyze the polymerizationpolymerization oxydative, un monomermonomer water-soluble conjugate, a polyelectrolyte with counterions for the crosslinkingcrosslinking covalent and a surfactantsurfactant for stabilization. With this cocktail, the authors were able to induce polymerization and subsequent gelation in different tissue environments.
Promising, even revolutionary, their results might lead to the formation of fully integrated electronic circuits in living organisms. ” Contact with substances in the body changes the structure of the gel and makes it electrically conductive, which it was not before injection. Depending on the fabric, we can also adjust the composition of the gel to trigger the electrical process, explains Xenofon Strakosasresearcher at LOE and Lund University.
chemical substances endogenousendogenous produced by the body are enough to cause the development of electrodes, and unlike other experiments of the same kind, it is not necessary to make modifications geneticgenetic or to use external signals like the lightlight or theenergyenergy electric. These same scientists also demonstrated that this method might target the materialmaterial electronic conductor on specific biological substructures, thus creating interfaces of stimulationstimulation appropriate nervous.
No side effects
For their experiment, the researchers succeeded in forming electrodes in the brainbrain, heart and caudal fin of zebrafish, as well as around the nervous tissue of medicinal leeches. Which means that eventually it might be possible to create fully integrated electronic circuits inside biological organisms.
Even better, the formation of electrodes inside the tissues had no effect on the animals, nor did the gel that was injected. ” By making smart changes to the chemistrychemistrywe were able to develop electrodes accepted by brain tissue and the immune systemimmune system. The zebrafish is an excellent model for studying organic electrodes in the brain,” concludes Professor Roger Olsson of Lund University Medical School.