RESEARCH Development of synthetic eye is eye opener

The team hopes to create bioengineered retinas so the blind can see.
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
A University of California engineer, entranced by the uncanny ability of insects like dragonflies and bumblebees to peer in all directions at once, has for the first time created microscopic versions of their compound eyes in the laboratory.
Luke Lee, professor of bioengineering and leader of a research team he calls the Bio-Poets, is reporting that his synthetic devices made of complex plastic materials can "see" in all directions simultaneously, and could well find uses in fields as varied as medicine, 3-D cameras and even espionage.
The bulbous compound eyes of many insects contain thousands of individual lenses, each of which sees in a single direction, but whose images are melded into a single, wide-angle view that allows the insect to survey its entire neighborhood at once.
Lee confesses that he can't figure out how nature could develop the complex devices that function so well in living organisms, but the team's success in creating a synthetic fly's eye, described today in the journal Science, is only the beginning, Lee said in an interview.
Lee's team of Bio-Poets -- the term stands for a mouthful of jargon: Biomolecular Polymer Opto-Electronic Technology and Science -- works on many projects at the frontier of bioengineering, and in the near future, he said, the group will be developing miniature diagnostic kits that patients could use under medical supervision to keep watch over obscure illnesses.
The team plans to create microscopic syringes for medical use that mimic the proboscis of mosquitoes and other insects that can stab and suck up blood or inject poisons, and they even hope to create bioengineered retinas so the blind can see.
"I'm always fascinated by how nature makes these complex things; I don't understand it, but I think engineers need to use nature as a model to make such useful devices in the laboratory," Lee said.
The compound eyes he and his colleagues have developed consists of exactly 8,370 individual lenses, each no larger than a pinpoint, and all clustered like a honeycomb in a single hemisphere about the size of a pinhead -- all in all, a true compound eye working on the same principle as the eye of a fly or a bumblebee.