Nature's bounty: Army-funded lab looks to plants and animals to inspire cutting edge research.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: Science and Technology - Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies

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SANTA BARBARA, Calif. -- Venus' flower basket, a white tubular sponge that resides one mile down in the depths of the Pacific Ocean, is prized among some Asian cultures for its skeleton's delicate lattice-work.

In Japan, it was once given as a wedding gift, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

But scientists at the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies, an Army-funded consortium of university researchers, believe the sponge could be prized for much more than its beauty.

That hard skeleton is fiberglass. And finding out how nature manufactures glass without furnaces may unlock new cost-efficient ways to make such materials.

"Sponge-inspired [technologies] can have varied applications because it's a completely new way of synthesizing materials," said David H. Gay, director of technology at the institute.

The way biological organisms such as the sponge make glass differs greatly from modern manufacturing plants, which require great amounts of energy.

Researchers at the institute are solving the mystery of how the deep sea dwelling organism makes glass and constructs complex patterns. They hope their findings may one day revolutionize material manufacturing.

The institute is leaning on a network of researchers from the University of California-Santa Barbara, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and California Institute of Technology (Caltech). It is a "virtual" institute, not a brick-and-mortar laboratory, but the director Daniel Morse has an office at UCSB's Marine Biotechnology Laboratory, which is a few yards away from the Pacific shore. Downstairs, the lab maintains dozens of aquariums containing marine life.

When they needed a Venus' flower basket sample, he didn't need to wander far.

The sponge "illustrates the theme of the institute.... biological inspiration leading to technological innovation," Morse said.

"The idea that biology--through millions of years of evolution--has developed solutions for the synthesis of complex materials, energy harnessing and transduction, sensing and for information processing," he added.

The lab's core funding comes from the office of the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, which pays the institute about $6.5 million per year to conduct basic research. It is part of a network of similar university-based laboratories such as the computer simulations-focused Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern...