Some might call this unique invention the pinnacle, or at least for now, of the most virile technology. And that despite, or precisely because of, the fact that they are miniscule elements.
It is nothing less than the “spermbot”, a small nanotechnology device specifically designed to “transport” sperm with low mobility so that they can be taken to an egg to fertilize it. These unique robots could thus help solve one of the main causes of male infertility, which is insufficient sperm motility.
According to the portal Snopes, a video where a spermbot is shown transporting a sperm to an egg has caused interest in social networks, and it is such a unique situation that many have thought that this video is false, a montage.
But it is a real technology, points out that portal, although it has only been applied in in vitro experiments, in a Petri dish, and not in a living organism. Those spermbots have never been inoculated into a person to aid conception, nor would a viable embryo have been produced from them. It is a technology that is not yet mature and requires further development before it can go beyond the Petri dish, but it has had promising results in in vitro experiments.
The spermbot technology, which is currently only a prototype, was first introduced in 2016 in an article in Nano Letters, a publication of the American Chemical Society. German scientists came up with that spermbot, cites Snopes, as a future option for infertility treatment, which specifically addresses the male problem of low sperm mobility and could be an alternative to treatments such as artificial insemination or in vitro fertilization.
A spermbot is a tiny metallic helix that can pick up and push a sperm cell powered by an external rotating magnetic field, which can be controlled. That makes the spermbot a “motor” to transport cells from one place to another within a fluid under conditions, say its creators, that resemble real physiological conditions.
However, there are still many things to solve before spermbots can be applied in a “real” and successful way in human in vitro fertilization processes, both in functional terms and in terms of interaction, compatibility and safety. Ethical issues must also be considered. And the possibility that this will be tested in human beings in vivo, and not only in vitro, still seems very remote.
A video from the American Chemical Society explains the concept and operation of the spermbot.
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In any case, the technology has an interesting potential, point out the authors of the aforementioned article, who indicate that “despite the fact that there are still several challenges in the way of achieving a successful fertilization with artificially motorized sperm, we believe that the potential of this A new approach to assisted reproduction can already be put into perspective with the present work ”.
Thus, there is still a long way to go before it can be said, if that happens, that a person was conceived thanks to the help of a tiny robot, but it is confirmed again that medical and scientific ingenuity and nanotechnology still have many unexpected scenarios. for the general public, in which to make contributions.
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