LivingCells
Latest
Scientists set lasers on cells, end up playing Pong
Researchers have devised plenty of innovative ways of viewing living cells, but their options are a bit more limited when it comes to actually manipulating cells without, you know, destroying them. Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles have now come up with one promising new possibility, however, using lasers instead of the fixed electrodes more commonly used today. Those, as you might expect, don't hit the cells directly, but are rather used to shine light on a "high-tech Petri dish," which has a grid of light detectors built into its floor and sets of transparent electrodes on the top and bottom. When lit up in a pattern of a circle or square, the cells can then be isolated and moved about at will or, conceivably, even be used for a game of Pong. Check out the video after the break to see for yourself.
Researchers looking to print living cells in 3D
Inkjet printers have long been used to print out all sorts of unusual goods, and while we've heard of scientists utilizing said technology to print stem cells, engineers are now exploring ways "to print 3D structures of cells." According to Paul Calvert, a materials scientist at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, printing out these cells in three dimensions "is like going from a black-and-white to a full-color [TV]," and he also states that moving the process forward could help "unravel the mysteries of cell-to-cell communication and, perhaps in the distant future, manufacture human organs from scratch." Notably, it was even suggested that the technique could potentially be used to "print out miniature organs for medical tests such as drug toxicity," and in an ideal world, to crank out "implantable human organs on demand."
