Cardiomyocytes-Actuated Morpho Butterfly Wings

Abstract

Morpho butterflies are famous for their wings' brilliant structural colors arising from periodic nanostructures, which show great potential value for fundamental research and practical applications. Here, a novel cellular mechanical visualizable biosensor formed by assembling engineered cardiac tissues on the Morpho butterfly wings is presented. The assembled cardiomyocytes benefit from the periodic parallel nanoridges of the wings and can recover their autonomic beating ability with guided cellular orientation and good contraction performance. As the beating processes are accompanied by the cardiomyocytes' elongation and contraction, the elastic butterfly wing substrate undergoes the same cycle of deformations, which causes corresponding synchronous shifts in their structural colors and photonic bandgaps for self-reporting of the cell mechanics. It is demonstrated that this self-reporting performance can be further improved by adding oriented carbon nanotubes in the nanoridges of the wings for the culture. In addition, taking advantage of the similar size of the cardiomyocyte and a single Morpho wing scale, the investigation of single-cell-level mechanics can be realized by detecting the optical performance of a single scale. These remarkable properties make these butterfly wings ideal platforms for biomedical research.

Keywords: Morpho butterflies; carbon nanotubes; cardiomyocytes; heart on a chip; structural color.