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Researchers at IBEC and their collaborators from the Johannes Kepler University of Linz, The University of Manchester and the company Keysight Technologies have now achieved an elusive goal: to measure the electromagnetic properties of biological materials at the level of a single bacterial cell and at very high frequencies (gigahertz).

Scientists at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) have revealed that, counter to previous understanding, the living cells in our bodies behave like solids rather than the liquids they are made of.

IBEC group leader and ICREA research professor Xavier Trepat, who led the research, describes the discovery as ‘truly counter-intuitive’. “It means we need brand new laws of physics to understand what ingredients a fluid needs to behave as a solid,” he says.

An IBEC researcher and his collaborators have taken the next step in their quest to achieve safe micromotors for medical drug and cargo delivery by developing a version that is powered by bacteria.

Samuel Sánchez, who recently published some work about similar micro-sized drug carriers that are powered by enzymes that consume biological fuels, such as glucose, worked with the part of his group at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems on this latest finding, highlighted on the inside cover of Advanced Materials Interfaces, which elaborates an even more promising ‘microswimmer’ that is powered by Escherichia coli.