BY PAMELA CORANTE
UCLA Today

UCLA and NASA have partnered to combine the highest advances in biology and engineering at the Institute for Cell Mimetic Space Exploration (CMISE).

CMISE, which officially opened Feb. 10, will meld the molecular world with aerospace technology to create miniscule monitoring systems — in essence, a “lab on a chip” — that could make research safer and more efficient in space and on Earth.

Based on the adaptive capability of the biological cell, CMISE’s findings will ultimately be applicable in space as well as on Earth and will have a profound impact on the medical, energy and defense fields, among others.

From chemical and bacteriological agent detection to early diagnosis of disease to the development of a “smart space suit,” CMISE scientists hope to be able to put the complex functions of a full-sized scientific laboratory onto chip-sized monitoring devices.

CMISE takes the biological cell and enhances it by adding molecular machines capable of monitoring and modifying the cell’s condition. These molecular devices can be as small as one-ten-thousandth the diameter of a human hair. In order for cells to become the next highest system — cells to tissue, tissue to organs, organs to physiological systems until an entire organism is formed — whole collections of hybrid systems must communicate to coordinate their actions. CMISE seeks to mimic how cells form themselves into progressively more complex systems, much like the way ants cooperate to pass along and process information in order to operate their colony.

“Now we will be able to realize our dream of transcending from the cell to the galaxy,” said Chih-Ming Ho, director of CMISE and the Ben Rich-Lockheed Martin Chair Professor in the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. Ho is also an associate vice chancellor for research. “With an automated system, we can conduct scientific tests without risking human lives.”

Explained Carlo Montemagno, the Roy and Carol Doumani Professor at UCLA and co-director of CMISE: “We’re marrying information processing with physical interactions. We’re not replicating the cell, but understanding how it communicates.”

Headquartered at the engineering school, the program will draw from an interdisciplinary team of scientists from UCLA, NASA, Arizona State University (ASU), Caltech, the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena and UC Irvine. CMISE will also offer an interdisciplinary outreach and educational program to foster an appreciation for scientific research among Los Angeles-area students, from junior high to graduate students.

Funded in large part by a five-year $15-million grant from NASA with renewal for another five years for a total of $30 million, CMISE will focus on four research paths: energetics, metabolics, systematics and CMISESat, a program at ASU to teach students how to build one-pound satellites that can be launched into space. These satellites will serve as test beds to demonstrate that cell mimetics technology can work in space.

Energetics develops miniscule generators to power the hybrid systems. Metabolics focuses on using a biological cell, intracellular components and molecular transducers to sense and control a single cell. Systematics applies to the technologies of the previous two groups, along with its own micro- and nanotechnology to scale up to larger systems.

Said Scott Hubbard, director of NASA Ames Research Center in the Silicon Valley: “I am delighted that NASA will be working with such a wide variety of university scientists and students from a number of disciplines to help enable future space exploration.”