Bioprinting

April 12, 2006 4:56 PM

Bioprinting. "Sitting in a culture dish, a layer of chicken heart cells beats in synchrony. But this muscle layer was not sliced from an intact heart, nor even grown laboriously in the lab. Instead, it was "printed", using a technology that could be the future of tissue engineering."
posted by semmi (10 comments total)

Is this a Bill Cosby thing?
posted by Smedleyman at 5:23 PM on April 12, 2006

I don't imagine you'd want to run Windows on machines that were being used to print organs. Puts a whole new spin on 'blue screen of death'.
posted by Malor at 5:32 PM on April 12, 2006

[The technique] relies on droplets of "bioink", clumps of cells a few hundred micrometres in diameter, which ... behave just like a liquid.

And I bitch about the price of printer cartridges now!
posted by rob511 at 5:51 PM on April 12, 2006

Smedleyman: I love you.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 6:44 PM on April 12, 2006

"It won't come near a smoking fire and Jell-O!"
posted by SPrintF at 8:27 PM on April 12, 2006

"It's in your home state! It's outside of YOUR DOOR!"

They couldn't have used anything other than a chicken heart, could they? They were just in a department meeting deciding what to create, and they noticed somebody had left a copy of Wonderfulness lying around, didn't they?
posted by MrBadExample at 9:04 PM on April 12, 2006

Also see the neat work done by Milan Mrksich.
posted by lalochezia at 10:23 PM on April 12, 2006

Printing organs is theft of god's IP.
posted by srboisvert at 12:22 AM on April 13, 2006

Bioink!
[bjoɪŋk]

This is fucking awesome.
posted by nebulawindphone at 4:24 AM on April 13, 2006

Chicken Little. Yum! Great with Coffiest!
posted by Goofyy at 4:32 AM on April 13, 2006