Coloring the heartbeatIn the 17th Century two giants of science, Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke, were
Coloring the heartbeat
In the 17th Century two giants of science, Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke, were both trying to understand how the wings of butterflies and peacocks, which are made of the same material as our fingernails and hair, could colors of such brilliant quality. They both came to the same conclusion, the color was a result of tiny structures on the wing, structures so small that they could not observe it themselves but had deduced must exist.
Science and technology have progressed far in those 300 years and not only can we easily observe the structure of a butterfly’s wing that produces such brilliant color, but we can readily create them ourselves. Inspired by this kind of structural color, researchers at Kyoto University’s Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Science (iCeMS), led by Prof. Easan Sivaniah, in collaboration with researchers from Semmelweis University and Kyoto University Medical School, have produced a structural color device for measuring the beating of heart cells which they hope will help speed up the process of pharmaceutical testing.
Like the wing of a butterfly, this device produces structural color from micro-patterns developed on the surface of a polymer gel. Heart cells beating on the device cause the structural color to change which can be detected easily with low power microscopes.
