In science fiction movies, some amputees are equipped with incredibly efficient bionic prostheses that enable them to accomplish everyday gestures as any valid person would. At the beginning of our project, we wanted to understand why this kind of technology was not yet available. There are millions of amputees around the world, and presently, the very best equipment that can be offered to them is still far from equaling expectations or those seen in the movies.

To solve this problem, our team of biologists, physicists, mathematicians, designers, and lawyers decided to tackle the problem from several angles. We had less than a year to develop our project, and we were resolute to come up with an innovation worthy of this major stake!

We decided to create a universal biological interface that would be able to connect the residual nerves from the amputees’ limbs to the prostheses. The idea was to find a way to express neurotrophins (e.g. proNGF) from the inside of the prosthesis to help the nerves grow towards it. Bacteria secreting those proteins from the prosthetic interface showed up to be a good option. However, it implicated an ethical and technical challenge. With this innovation came the necessity to have the device surgically osseointegrated to the patient. This opened our minds to a huge challenge of orthopedic implants: infectious biofilms. They frequently develop around implants and cause heavy infections, very resistant to antibiotics. We decided to tackle both problems at the same time, using synthetic biology to add a barrier of protection against pathogenic bacteria directly into our device.

We designed this interface as something that could become the new standard, something that would then be connected to any bionic prosthesis, and that would allow a much greater control of the movement. We mixed synthetic biology with disciplines like physics and industrial design to come up with the following prototype (Figure 1).

To do all of that, we decided to cover the inner part of the device with an engineered biofilm of Escherichia coli bacteria. We gave them two main functions: the secretion of proNGF and the inhibition of Staphylococcus aureus quorum sensing (Figure 2).

Since we began working on NeuronArch, we have all endeavored to make it become something real. We hope you will have as much fun discovering our project through our wiki as we had making it!