Dr. Wojciech Bula, a post-doctoral researcher, recently flew to Spain to meet with other scientists, sightseeing along La Rumbla Boulevard and conducting research by setting up experiments. According to Bula, the artificial gland in the device acts to mimic the female moth and emits pheromones. Female sexual pheromones evaporate into the wind tunnel where male moths are flying around. This process attracts the male to find the female. The male moves its wings for around 30 seconds and then orients himself towards grabbing the pheromone. The first experiment resulted in the moth reacting poorly to the chemical compound. Later the scientists changed the compound to water combined with 20 percent ethanol and the moths were happy with the combination. `The male moths have a place where they take off. It's a sort table and the first one fell from the table and was crouching. I thought to myself, “He has broken a wing,” but then the second one did the same thing, and the third one did the same, and they were completely drunk, just crouching there and not able to fly,' laughs Bula.
The moth-on-a-chip research project involves five European universities in the iChem consortium. Collectively, Warwick and Leicester Universities in England focus on the physical part of the device by building the sensors. In addition, Leicester makes the chemical compound to imitate the moth pheromone. Scientists in Jena, Germany, contribute research to the theory side finding out how the brain is connected to neuronal receptors and how an impulse in the brain is delivered to different parts of the brain. `Spain works closely with the UT because they try to see which reactions are needed to produce the pheromone. They transfer the “know-how” to us and offer the knowledge to produce it,' says Bula, who has lived in the Netherlands for almost six years and travels often to Poland, which he says is only 800 kilometers away. `I don't see many differences between Poland and Holland, you just change the first letter from an “H” to a “P,” and then simply add an “L”,' chuckles Bula.
On the horizon, infochemical communication is an emerging field and has the potential of offer solutions for diverse applications, from pest management to group coordination of swarms of mobile robots. Mainly, the objective of the moth-on-a-chip project is to create the first technology for chemical communication. `Maybe by using different pheromones, we cannot change the moth's social behavior but that of other species. The project is to discover what will be the emerging technologies from the device because at this moment we only are at the beginning of the story.”
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Lab to market gap
While in the lab Wojciech Bula’s high-tech eye stays fixed on refining the chemoemitter of the moth-on-a-chip device. ‘I’m a scientist with an engineering touch,’ he says about himself. His two past hobbies, writing poetry and sailing, float in the background of this life now and his love is focused keenly on science and his fiancé. ‘I want to see the devices working, and if someone wants to commercialize it then “okay.” It’s possible. We think let’s publish a paper about it and then it is blurring into the academic environment.’ Bula noticed a recurring gap between bringing discoveries made in the lab to practical applications for the market. ‘The final product approach,’ he says, ‘is trying to make a device as user-friendly, robust and unique as possible. In his own words: ‘The final product approach, not the proof of concept approach is my method and it takes more time.’
