Construction of Regenerative Mechanical Systems of Insect Cells for a Quasi-Living Machine

摘要

Here we propose the regenerative mechanical system for a quasi-living machine. As a first step toward the realization of this system, the larvae of two lepidopteran species, Bombyx mori (BM) and Thysanoplusia intermixta (TI) were dissected and their tissues were cultured. The removed TI dorsal vessels kept beating spontaneously and vigorously for three days and beating weakly more than three weeks. The removed BM ones beat weakly or nothing. It is essential for tissue reconstruction at the cell level to obtain and culture the cells of these tissues. The TI dorsal vessel cells were obtained by collecting the migrating cells from the tissues and the BM dorsal vessel cells were obtained by enzymatic dissociation of the tissues. In this study, the spontaneous beatings of both dorsal vessel cells were not observed. These experimental results suggest the possibility of construction of a regenerative microrobotic system with living components in future.