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The making of tracker bees Mail Tribune photos / Drew Fleming Scientist and professor Peter Wu at Southern Oregon University looks through the Inchworm, a scanning, tunneling microscope which maps atoms. Wu was among a group of scientists who discovered how to transfer material using a laser beam. SOU prof's system of making bees associate honey with munitions, and then following them through laser signatures, could help fight terrorism By JOHN DARLING ASHLAND - Picture yourself in a military situation, needing to find explosives being used by terrorists or enemy troops. Maybe the territory is big and the time short. Going in with troops or even bomb-sniffing dogs might be too obvious, dangerous or time-consuming. You need something small and practically invisible to do the job, preferably something the enemy can't even see. This is the sort of problem you give to a think tank full of geniuses with big imaginations and a flair for working between the worlds of physics and biology. It's the sort of problem the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., gave to Peter Wu, a Southern Oregon University physics professor - and about a dozen other scientists from Johns Hopkins University, the National Institutes of Health and other prestigious groups over the last four summers. At the NRL, Wu and friends found the answer: bees. The scientists gave the bees' abdomens laser haircuts and then tattooed them with silver only a few microns (a millionth of a meter) thick, essentially giving the bees silver antennae. The bees can be placed adjacent to explosive material and then fed honey so they become conditioned to associate the smell of explosives with honey. When released, they can be tracked on radar as they seek out the chemical signature of explosives, Wu told an audience of SOU student physicists at a lecture Friday titled, "A Loose Canon With a Big Laser - What I Did on My Sabbatical." The process, called MAPLE - or Matrix-Assisted Pulsed Laser Evaporation - is the stuff of cutting-edge research and it goes far beyond weapons applications. The Navy, Wu said, lets him and his colleagues go where the discoveries take them, then figures out applications later. From here, Wu envisions combining electronics with biology - using MAPLE to manipulate living tissue. "This was the big kahuna," he joked. Wu plunged into the field of biology, reading piles of graduate-level biology texts and approaching scientists - "Can I play?" he joked again - in biology think tanks for guidance, lab space and cell samples. Wu also established that a laser beam can transport e. coli cells, insulin and mammalian tissue cells. More importantly, the cells lived through it. "This had never been done before. It was a new step, a new tool, to move cells like this. It'll take time to tell what the impact will be on science," he said. Wu, however, is already moving on to the next applications: the manipulation of living organisms on a micron scale, possibly including making tiny pumps out of muscle tissue. Or developing a credit-card-sized biosensor to read cell signals, allowing an instantaneous, low-cost physical exam in the field - by performing the equivalent of a credit-card swipe through a drop of blood. Wu's applications in tissue engineering could someday save painful surgery and long recovery periods by culturing the patient's own tissue, mixed with porous polymer and shaped to fit - then laser-pulsing it into lesions, where new tissue can bond with old. Because it's the patient's own tissue, there is no rejection battle. Using the same process, scientists may enhance the health of sample tissue by laser-zapping out cancerous or unhealthy cells. Wu and his colleagues have been presenting their discoveries at conferences and publishing them in scientific journals. The team, funded by the Department of Defense, has become a "well-structured project," Wu said, and will gather again next summer. John Darling is a free-lance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at [email protected] . Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.