Amazing stuff!
"... For the first time, scientists have devised a microbial link entirely made out of bacteria, which can be used to print three-dimensional materials with unique properties, typical of living things. ...
Bioinks are materials used to produce engineered live tissue using 3D printing technology. They’re usually made of living cells enveloped in a 3D molecular scaffold, usually made from a biopolymer gel.
Unlike your typical 3D printer that extrudes an inanimate object based on the specifications of a digital model, bioinks produce tissue-like objects that are constantly morphing. ..."From the abstract:
"... The emerging field of living materials has leveraged microbial engineering to produce materials for various applications but building 3D structures in arbitrary patterns and shapes has been a major challenge. Here we set out to develop a bioink, termed as “microbial ink” that is produced entirely from genetically engineered microbial cells, programmed to perform a bottom-up, hierarchical self-assembly of protein monomers into nanofibers, and further into nanofiber networks that comprise extrudable hydrogels. We further demonstrate the 3D printing of functional living materials by embedding programmed Escherichia coli (E. coli) cells and nanofibers into microbial ink, which can sequester toxic moieties, release biologics, and regulate its own cell growth through the chemical induction of rationally designed genetic circuits. In this work, we present the advanced capabilities of nanobiotechnology and living materials technology to 3D-print functional living architectures."
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