Richard C. Seagrave

Engineering Lessons from Biology - Past and Future

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This presentation is divided into five parts. It is intended to review the major lessons that engineers, particularly chemical engineers interested in biomedical applications, have experienced in the last few decades. It is based on the contributions of a series of outstanding graduate students in chemical and biomedical engineering, as well as on the material developed for and presented in the course "Biomedical Applications of Chemical Engineering," (ChE/BME 540), over the past 30 years. It is also based on a view of chemical engineering and biology that is best described by the following topics: chemical reactions and kinetics, transport phenomena and mass balances, thermodynamics and energy balances, dynamic systems, design and organization, control and optimization, and engineering of new materials.

The major sections of the presentation are

• Some history lessons
• Kidneys, transport phenomena par excellence
• Muscles, pumps, and energy conversion
• Growth, development, and life support systems
• Organization and dynamical systems
• Future areas of unusual promise

In each section, examples of the added insight that biological phenomena have brought to chemical engineering are reviewed. Among the lessons learned are the following:

• We can better understand the principles we use in engineering when we make them work in a new environment.
• A large number of very small things muscles, (for example nephrons, muscle fibers, cells) operating in parallel can achieve surprising and hard to duplicate results.
• Countercurrent multiplier exchange systems can provide extraordinary degrees of efficiency for heat and mass transfer, as well as assist in energy conversion systems with dramatic efficiencies.
• Non-linear dynamic systems can produce spatio-temporal organization, and can also lead to chaotic behavior.
• Living systems utilize the low information-entropy of genetic material to harness energy, either stored initially or supplied in open systems, to maintain their low specific entropy (life), while increasing their total entropy and that of their surroundings.
• Aging may be a consequence of the rate of increase of the informational-entropy (or the loss of redundancy) of the genome. Unquestionably, engineered systems follow the same rules, as do organizations at many levels!

We have a large collection of tools we need to explain life, Its evolution, and its repair, if we proceed carefully. There are distinct areas of great future promise. Among them are

• Nano-bio-technology
• Biological-based computing
• Selective bio-catalysis
• Creation of new biomaterials
• Macro and micro-organization.