A team of engineers from MIT has presented a new type of living ink. That is capable of reacting to specific chemical products. It is an ink made with living genetically modified cells. So we have living bacteria ink for the 3D printer.
MIT creates a living ink made of bacteria for 3D printers
It is a mixture of hydrogel (water/polymer mixture), nutrients and living cells. That form the ink which we can use on three-dimensional structures using a 3D printer. The bacterium is very resistant, and it survives when it adds to a hydrogel and faces the forces applied in the printing process.
GIF Data File Stored in Living DNA
The objective is to be able to program its reaction to different chemical products, something that we can say the illumination effects of chemical reactions. It is possible, for example, to print a small tree where each branch reacts differently to a specific chemical.
The demonstration showed how the hydrogel patch was put on the hand, previously smeared with different chemicals. We can say it something that could be useful to create living tattoos that can monitor various compounds.
Medical Purposes
They believe that they can get the cells to communicate with each other. And, therefore, we can also create a living computer in 3D. At the moment they want to use it as living sensors that we will use to administer medications over time or to modernize surgical implants.
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