Prof. Tetsuo Kondo Visited Life College of Sci. & Tech. HUST
On Nov. 25th, 2014, Invited by Prof. Yang,
Prof. Osada Yoshihito visited the College of Life Science and Technology of
HUST, and presented an excellent speech entitled “Intelligent Gels-An Approach
to Artificial Muscles”.
They developed a novel method to synthesize
hydrogels with excellent mechanical performances by introducing a
double-network (DN) structure composed of various combinations of hydrophilic
polymers. The DN hydrogel exhibited fracture strengths as high as several tens
of megapascals, i.e., up to ~100 kgf cm-2
which is almost equivalent to that of tendon. They also reported
new-type of bio-machine reconstructed from the chemically cross-linked muscle
protein: actin–myosin and microtubule-kinesin gels (Nanobiomachine) both fueled
by an adenosine triphosphate(ATP). This might be the first man-made biomachine
gels fueled by ATP, central interests of
life science now-a-days.
