3D printing of bacteria into functional complex materials

By M. Schaffner, P. Rühs, F. Coulter, S. Kilcher, André R. Studart. Science Advances, 2017

367 citations recorded by the source corpus.

3D printing of bacteria-laden hydrogels enables the digital fabrication of complex functional materials. Despite recent advances to control the spatial composition and dynamic functionalities of bacteria embedded in materials, bacterial localization into complex three-dimensional (3D) geometries remains a major challenge. We demonstrate a 3D printing approach to create bacteria-derived functional materials by combining the natural diverse metabolism of bacteria with the shape design freedom of additive manufacturing. To achieve this, we embedded bacteria in a biocompatible and functionalized 3D printing ink and printed two types of “living materials” capable of degrading pollutants and of producing medically relevant bacterial cellulose. With this versatile bacteria-printing platform, complex materials displaying spatially specific compositions, geometry, and properties not accessed by standard technologies can be assembled from bottom up for new biotechnological and biomedical applications.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9392255a6b7c0b950ce54762a7930a86f52d180d