There's no better way to talk about this article besides summarizing it. A bioengineer at the University of Texas in Austin used 3-D printing to create bacteria structures that bacteria could grow and colonize in. This was done by mixing bacteria with gelatin and a light active binding agent. When hit with a laser, the gelatin/bacteria mixture solidified into thin sheets that can be formed into these structures. Bacteria can work together to protect each other by encasing one another, making the bacteria inside untouchable to an antibiotic attempting to fight it. Bacteria can also form different geometrical shapes, some which are less susceptible to antibiotics. Using these generate 3-D structures, which can be any formed into any shape, researchers can study the interaction of different bacteria and get a better understanding of how these different structures increase the bacterias resistance to antibiotics.
I don't know much about bacteria, but I thought the article was interesting and wanted to get it out there for people to read. 3-D printing offers new approaches and opportunities in biological research. Microscopes can reveal information about structure or make up of a cell or microorganism, but 3-D printing provides the opportunity to see how species interact. It also can probably be used to magnify them, imagine, big scale bacteria! What are some possible other uses for 3-D printing?
I've seen what people have been doing with 3-D printing and it is pretty amazing. It is awesome that it is making its way into the world of research science. It seems this 3-D printing will help researchers get a better understanding of how a organism behaves.
ReplyDeleteFrom this article that's where it looks like 3-D printing is heading!
DeleteA student in my chemical seminar class presented over this. Her presentation covered using 3D printing to imitate tissue, such as human tissues.
ReplyDeleteSeems like an interesting new study that has much potential in the future.
I don't know if you remember, but was the 3D printing used to study the tissue or potentially to replace damaged or remove tissue in the body? That would be an interesting study, if new, functioning tissues can be produced by the 3D printer and transported into the human body.
DeleteI have read some articles on 3-D and its is amazing how far our technology has come and is contentiously growing
ReplyDeleteMy lab collaborates a lot with the people at UT Austin and it's really intriguing to see all the applications from the 3-D printer. For us, it was merely to print out larger scale images of skulls from very small animals, but this is amzing. In addition, I have spoken to other reserachers from a different school that are using 3-D printing for jaw reconstruction.
ReplyDeleteThat's cool that your lab has gotten to use the 3-D printer. That's how I thought the printer would be used, for enlarging objects that are hard to see at their normal size, but it's interesting to see all the different applications!
DeleteI hate that I cannot remember the exact use of the 3D printer, but I saw an episode on TV where this technique was used with respect to Forensics. I want to say with strong conviction that it dealt with the use of creating a mold of either the suspect of victim's face with some other high tech stuff. Either way, from what I saw, and hopefully it relates, the 3D printer created thousands of sheets of paper using a laser to help produce the mold.
ReplyDeleteI recall seeing a TV episode involving 3D printing, which is why this article caught my attention. TV is great at getting out new inventions!
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