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A group of researchers from Harvard College and Brigham and Ladies’s Hospital, Harvard Medical College, has developed a sort of residing ink that can be utilized to print residing supplies. Of their paper printed within the journal Nature Communications, the group describes how they made their ink and potential makes use of for it.
For a number of years, microbial engineers have been working to develop a way to create residing supplies to be used in all kinds of functions equivalent to medical gadgets. However getting such supplies to evolve to desired 3D constructions has confirmed to be a frightening job. On this new effort, the researchers have taken a brand new method to tackling the issue—engineering Escherichia coli to supply a product that can be utilized as the premise for an ink to be used in a 3D printer.
The work started by bioengineering the micro organism to supply residing nanofibers. The researchers then bundled the fibers and added different elements to supply a sort of residing ink that could possibly be utilized in a traditional 3D printer. As soon as they discovered the idea viable, the group bioengineered different microbes to supply different sorts of residing fibers or supplies and added them to the ink. They then used the ink to print 3D objects that had residing elements. One was a cloth that secreted azurin—an anticancer drug—when stimulated by sure chemical compounds. One other was a cloth that sequestered Bisphenol A (a toxin that has discovered its method into the atmosphere) with out help from different chemical compounds or gadgets.
The researchers imagine that their idea means that producing such inks could possibly be a self-creating proposition. Engineering could possibly be added to the microbes to push them to supply carbon copies of themselves—the ink may actually be grown in a jar. Additionally they state that it seems potential that the approach could possibly be used to print renewable constructing supplies that might not solely develop however may self heal—a potential method to constructing self-sustaining houses right here on Earth, or on the moon or on Mars.
Anna M. Duraj-Thatte et al, Programmable microbial ink for 3D printing of residing supplies produced from genetically engineered protein nanofibers, Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-26791-x
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