Does anyone else find the implications of 3-D printing somewhat terrifying? Printing functional guns that can beat metal-detectors. Printing organs. Making hybrid bio-bots. The whole topic freaks me out.
Vincent Chan, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab and lead author of a paper published last fall describing the work, said he first started looking at using 3-D printers about five years ago. “Our goal coming into this was the holy grail — organ printing,” he said. “But, obviously, it’s very complex and very difficult.” So he and others in the lab began looking at other ways to use the technology.
With the biobots, the printer prints the gel, not the cells. And it prints the gel in a specific shape — something like a tiny springboard, about one-quarter-inch long, that is elevated on a short base. Then heart muscle cells from rats are placed on one side of the board.
“The cells start to spread out and form connections,” Dr. Chan said. And then, being heart cells, they start to beat in unison. The contractions cause the board to curl and uncurl, moving the whole structure forward. With the 3-D printer, the researchers were able to make springboards of different thicknesses to alter the degree of curling, optimizing the movement.
I felt a little let down when the millennium came and we still didn’t have our jet packs and hovercrafts. But I think the futuristic stuff is starting to roll out now. My son’s world is going to be nothing like mine.