Tardigrade tattooing with nano technology by a team of researchers in Denmark may open the development of biocompatible nano devices to sense, directly diagnose, and create living microrobots.

Scientists at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) are the first to have tattooed living tardigrades by using a highly developed nanofabrication technology. A study that is considered one of the milestones towards the convergence of nano technology with the biological systems has been published in Nano Letters.

The team employed a different technique a pure form of ice lithography to etch the dormant late stage of the tardigrade with a nanometric pattern of features less than 72 nanometers large. Their survival rate remained intact after this treatment as the organisms were wrapped in a biocompatible anisole film and subjected to a cryptobiotic state and 40 percent of these organisms survived after treatment, showing high viability in further experimentation.

The innovation embodies the increasing drive in the nano technology with regard to designing biocompatible machines in order to offer targeted diagnostics and living microrobotics. The lead scientist Ding Zhao pointed toward future projections to extend such a nano-tattooing technique to bacteria and even to single cells of humans to generate potential uses in disease monitoring and personalized medicine.

Direct nano-patterning of living cells would enhance the rate of microbial sensing, biointerfaces or hybrid electronic-biological applications. With the development of nano technology these integrations can change the boundaries of what can be done in the fields of healthcare and synthetic biology.