Printing objects that can incorporate living organisms

MIT News  January 23, 2020
Significant efforts exist to develop living/non‐living composite materials—known as biohybrids—that can support and control the functionality of biological agents. A team of researchers in the US (MIT, Dana Farber Cancer Institute) has developed a Hybrid Living Material (HLM) fabrication platform which integrates computational design, additive manufacturing, and synthetic biology to achieve replicable fabrication and control of biohybrids. The approach involves modification of multimaterial 3D‐printer descriptions to control the distribution of chemical signals within printed objects, and subsequent addition of hydrogel to object surfaces to immobilize engineered Escherichia coli and facilitate material‐driven chemical signaling. The HLM platform produces biohybrid materials of wearable‐scale, self‐supporting 3D structure, and programmable biological surfaces that are replicable and customizable, thereby unlocking paths to apply industrial modeling and fabrication methods toward the design of living materials…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE

A series of masks 3D printed by the Media Lab’s Mediated Matter group contained chemical signals embedded in the material… Credit: courtesy of the Media Lab’s Mediated Matter Group

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