Researchers in China have figured out how to tattoo microscopic images on tardigrades—those indestructible, water-dwelling microbial critters. It’s all in an effort to merge biology with nanotech in the hope that it will lead to more useful applications than applying a tramp stamp to a minuscule teddy bear.
Tardigrades are microscopic animals that can survive pretty much anything, from radiation to a deep freeze to the vacuum of space. Naturally, they became perfect guinea pigs for a wild new technique in the mouthful of a field known as biocompatible microfabrication, or the science of building really tiny stuff that could one day help your body fix itself.
Scientists dehydrated the tardigrades into a cryptobiotic state, meaning it was essentially dead but not quite. They cooled them to -226°F and covered them in a compound called anisole that, as the name suggests, made the tardigrades smell like ropes of black licorice.
Then they used a focused electron beam to etch simple microscopic patterns like lines, dots, and even logos, onto their frozen little bodies. The beam chemically altered the anisole, turning it into a tattoo that stuck around after the rest of the anisole had dissipated.
Only around 40 percent of them survived this frigid forced hibernation. The ones that lived were rehydrated, revived, and seemingly unbothered by their new ink. If you’ve ever woken up from a drunken stupor with a regrettable tattoo, you can sympathize with the tardigrades.
The difference is that your tattoo of Tweety Bird holding a gun likely did not advance the field of nanomedicine. This blend of electron beams and living tissue could power future tech like living microrobots that deliver meds or sniff out diseases.
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