Scientists 3D Print Inside a Living Cell
upstart writes:
Ever since the popularity of 3D-printing skyrocketed in the mid-aughts, people have manufactured everything from chocolate to rocket fuel-and that list now includes a microscopic elephant inside of a living cell (which you can see here). Technology has really leveled up since 2005.
As new biological opportunities for 3D printing keep emerging, a team of researchers-from the J. Stefan Institute, University of Ljubljana, and CENN Nanocenter in Slovenia-have found a way to pull the process off within a cell's cytoplasm. They were successfully able to print not only an elephant, but several other impossibly small structures using a liqiud polymer and a hyperfocused petawatt laser.
"Intracellular 3D printing offers an unprecedented degree of control over the cellular interior, allowing the integration of synthetic structures with native biological functions," the team said in a study recently posted to the preprint server arXiv. "This platform could allow for reconfiguration of cellular architecture, embed logic or mechanical components within the cytoplasm, and design cells with enhanced or entirely new properties."
For this experiment, the team used a negative photoresist (a material that changes when exposed to certain wavelengths of energy), which became insoluble when exposed to light. It was also the most biocompatible formula possible. After a droplet of photoresist was injected into the cell, an object was printed using a process called two-photon photolithography, which involves targeting an area inside the droplet with a laserto create a microstructure. Anything zapped with two photons from the laser hardens, while any remaining photoresist that has not been lasered into a structure dissolves.
Along with the ironically tiny 10-micrometer elephant, the research team printed other microstructures, like barcodes and a sphere that acted as a micro-laser. The former could eventually allow scientists to track what is going on inside individual cells, and give experts much more detailed insight into cellular function than is currently possible. The latter could be produced in various sizes that all emit light slightly differently, labeling cells with specific light signatures.
Surviving cells continued to go on as if nothing had happened. When a few of them divided, the microstructure inside was passed down to one of the daughter cells. Viability was still an issue, however-even the biocompatible photoresist was still somewhat toxic, and injecting liquid polymer damaged the cell membrane and sometimes caused cell death. How likely cells were to survive depended on the type of cell, and in total, about half of the cells that had microstructures printed in them made it through the experiment.
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