16cm Lunar Wah Wah

Tissue |Engineering w

Extraction

From fluid tissues such as blood, cells are extracted by bulk methods, usually centrifugation or apheresis. From solid tissues, extraction is more difficult. Usually the tissue is minced, and then digested with the enzymes trypsin orcollagenase to remove the extracellular matrix that holds the cells. After that, the cells are free floating, and extracted using centrifugation or apheresis.
Digestion with trypsin is very dependent on temperature. Higher temperatures digest the matrix faster, but create more damage. Collagenase is less temperature dependent, and damages fewer cells, but takes longer and is a more expensive reagent.

Scaffolds

Cells are often implanted or 'seeded' into an artificial structure capable of supporting three-dimensional tissue formation. These structures, typically called scaffolds, are often critical, both ex vivo as well as in vivo, to recapitulating the in vivo milieu and allowing cells to influence their own microenvironments. Scaffolds usually serve at least one of the following purposes:

Allow cell attachment and migration
Deliver and retain cells and biochemical factors
Enable diffusion of vital cell nutrients and expressed products
Exert certain mechanical and biological influences to modify the behaviour of the cell phase.

Tissue culture

In many cases, creation of functional tissues and biological structures in vitro requires extensive culturing to promote survival, growth and inducement of functionality. In general, the basic requirements of cells must be maintained in culture, which include oxygen, pH, humidity,temperature, nutrients and osmotic pressure maintenance.

Tissue engineered cultures also present additional problems in maintaining culture conditions. In standard cell culture, diffusion is often the sole means of nutrient and metabolite transport. However, as a culture becomes larger and more complex, such as the case with engineered organs and whole tissues, other mechanisms must be employed to maintain the culture, such as the creation of capillary networks within the tissue.

Another issue with tissue culture is introducing the proper factors or stimuli required to induce functionality. In many cases, simple maintenance culture is not sufficient. Growth factors, hormones, specific metabolites or nutrients, chemical and physical stimuli are sometimes required. For example, certain cells respond to changes in oxygen tension as part of their normal development, such as chondrocytes, which must adapt to low oxygen conditions or hypoxia during skeletal development. Others, such as endothelial cells, respond toshear stress from fluid flow, which is encountered in blood vessels. Mechanical stimuli, such as pressure pulses seem to be beneficial to all kind of cardiovascular tissue such as heart valves, blood vessels or pericardium.

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http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Jan09/mosquitoLoveSong.html

blog http://mobiusasi.wordpress.com/

#2 http://responsivearts.blogspot.com/2008/02/bio-artist-tests-music-on-bacteria.html

TomMoody's blog http://www.tommoody.us/

http://notebook.neilbarrett.com/it/

In Vitro meat w

The process

Most meat is animal muscle. The process of developing in vitro meat involves taking muscle cells and applying a protein that helps the cells to grow into large portions of meat.^[1] Once the initial cells have been obtained, additional animals would not be needed – akin to the production of yogurt cultures.^[11]

There are, loosely, two approaches for production of in vitro meat: loose muscle cells and structured muscle, the latter one being vastly more challenging than the former. Muscles consist of muscle fibers, long cells with multiple nuclei. They don't proliferate by themselves, but arise when precursor cells fuse. Precursor cells can be embryonic stem cells or satellite cells, specialized stem cells in muscle tissue. Theoretically, it is relatively simple to culture them in a bioreactor and then make them fuse. For the growth of real muscle, however, the cells should grow "on the spot," which requires a perfusion system akin to a blood supply to deliver nutrients and oxygen close to the growing cells, as well as to remove the waste products. In addition, other cell types, such as adipocytes, need to be grown, and chemical messengers should provide clues to the growing tissue about the structure. Lastly, muscle tissue needs to be physically stretched or "exercised" to properly develop.^[1]

In vitro meat does not necessarily involve genetic engineering, a common misconception. In fact, the cells involved are natural cells which would grow in the normal method

....In 2008, PETA offered a $1 million prize to the first company that brings lab-grown chicken meat to consumers by 2012.^[8] The Dutch government has put US$4 million into experiments into in vitro meat.^[14] The In Vitro Meat Consortium, a group formed by international researchers interested in the technology, held the first international conference on the production of in vitro meat, hosted by the Food Research Institute of Norway in April 2008, to discuss commercial possibilities.^[1] Time Magazine declared in vitro meat production to be one of the 50 breakthrough ideas of 2009. ^[20] In November 2009, scientists from the Netherlands announced they had managed to grow meat in the laboratory using the cells from a live pig

3D printing w

There have been several, often related efforts to develop 3D printers suitable for desktop use, and to make this technology available at price points affordable to many individual end-users. Much of this work was driven by and targeted on DIY/enthusiast/early adopter communities, with links to both the academic and hacker^[13] communities.

RepRap is a project that aims to produce a FOSS 3D printer, whose full specifications are released under the GNU General Public License, and which can print a copy of itself. As of November 2010, the RepRap can only print plastic parts. Research is under way to let the device print circuit boards too, as well as metal parts.

Artificial skin w

BBC article Jaw Bone from stem cells x

Fibers w

straw bales

Biomechatrronics x

Robotic fish

As mentioned before Herr and his colleagues made a robotic fish that was propelled by living muscle tissue taken from frog legs. The robotic fish was a prototype of a biomechatronic device with a living actuator. The following charactersitics were given to the fish.^[1]