Bio-Inspired Flexible Multi-Sensory Artificial Skin

Overview

Indian Springs School Artificial skin is a synthetic membrane structure that mimics the flexibility and sensory functions of biological skin. Similar to receptors in biological skin sending signals to neurons in the brain, an artificial skin needs sensors capable of converting information into electrical signals and transmitting them. Recently, artificial skin has received a lot of attention for various applications, such as prosthetics, soft robotics, virtual reality, wearable devices, and emerging medical applications. In particular, it can potentially help reduce the number of amputations due to foot ulcers found in 25% of diabetic individuals. This project aims to create a synthetic artificial skin that is flexible and capable of sensing temperature and pressure/touch. To do so, thin and flexible films were realized using pectin, a natural substance found in many fruits and vegetables. Low-methoxyl citrus and apple-based pectins were compared. The properties of pectin films were optimized by systematically adjusting the pectin concentration and thickness during jellification. After drying, the pectin was used as a temperature sensing artificial skin. A change in electrical current of nearly 10,000% was achieved when the temperature was varied between 24 and ~80 °C. The magnitude of the current change was a direct function of the amount of temperature change. Flexible pressure/touch sensing devices were realized using silvercoated microbeads and polydimethylsiloxane flexible membranes. Electrical responses due to both continuous and instantaneous pressure stimuli on the device surface were successfully detected, with the magnitude of current change being a function of the amount of pressure applied. SE Sensory Neuron cGAL Driver in Caenorhabditis Elegans James Lao Zionsville Community High School Zionsville, Indiana Supervising Scientist Stephanie Nava California Institute of Technology cGAL, a bipartite GAL4-UAS system, was recently developed for cell-specific modulation of gene expression in Caenorhabditis elegans. The cGAL system consists of a “driver” construct and an “effector” construct. The driver construct uses a cell-specific promoter to express the GAL4 protein in designated cells, and the effector construct places upstream activating sequence (UAS) sites upstream of the gene of interest. If two separate transgenic cell lines containing a driver and an effector individually are crossed, the expressed GAL4 protein will bind to the UAS sites and drive the expression of downstream genes. By leveraging the specificity and bipartite nature of the cGAL system, researchers can manipulate gene expression and interrogate gene functions. In this study, we constructed a novel cGAL driver using part of the promoter region of gcy-5 due to its highly-specific expression in ASE neurons, which are responsible for the detection of chemical repellants and water-soluble attractants. The driver plasmid was constructed through two rounds of polymerase chain reactions and injected into the 15xUAS::GFP (green fluorescent protein) effector strain of C. elegans. Microscopy confirmed ASE neuron-specific GFP expression. The results demonstrate that the promotor in our driver construct can dictate the expression of GAL4 protein specifically in ASE neurons, which binds to the UAS site and drives the expression of the downstream GFP gene. This novel cGAL driver construct can be used by the scientific community to precisely control the expression of genes of interest in ASE neurons and to understand the genetic basis for neuron biological activity.

Competition history

• JSHS 2020 Category not listed

Resources

• National JSHS abstract book ↗

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