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Biotech News

Bacterial Printing Press 90

Posted by samzenpus from the don't-read-this-paper dept.
juushin writes "New Scientist has reported that scientists at Harvard University have created a bacterial printing press that can be reconfigured to print complex patterns of bacteria. The technology is reported to have applications in studying biofilms, communication between bacteria (and colonies of bacteria), and the interaction of bacteria and surfaces. Of medical interest, these applications may lead to a better understanding of how to prevent bacterial infections."
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Bacterial Printing Press More

Bacterial Printing Press

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  • It would be kind neat to have bathroom tiles that grow into flowers.

  • Hmm. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FireballX301 ( 766274 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @02:07AM (#12702093) Journal
    I actually did RTFA. This basically seems like a neater way to make a Petri dish.

    He uses bacteria as 'ink', and presses the bacterial mold onto a sheet to produce a bacteria pattern.

    I'm not exactly sure why this is better or worse than simply pipetting bacteria into a large petri dish, though.
    • I'm not exactly sure why this is better or worse than simply pipetting bacteria into a large petri dish, though.

      It's better because it allows much more detailed and accurate patterns of bacteria to be deposited - using a pipette pretty much all you can do is stick a blob of gunk on a bit of glass.

  • stamping rather than ink-jet based... (Score:4, Funny)

    by blackcoot ( 124938 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @02:08AM (#12702096)
    it's a neat process. before i read the article i'd pictured an inkjet-esque approach. probably a good thing they didn't go that way --- can you imagine how much consumables would cost? to say nothing of issues related to poor quality drivers...
    • Actually ink can be a good bacterial growth medium. Especially polygraph ink (for Grass polygraphs, we use them at the lab). It even comes with a warning that bacteria will grow rappidly in it and to make sure to clean it up. So yeah, I can see sprinking some of that ink to 'seed' a pattern that baceria will further grow and develop, even on someone's skin...
    • to say nothing of issues related to poor quality drivers...

      "Okay Beaker, print out a test page now!"
      "Meep"

      [Whiirrrr zip whirrrrr zip whirrr]

      "RAWWWWR!"
      "Mee...meee...MEEEP MEEEP MEEEEEEP!"
      "Good job, Beaker! Now we know that is definitely too much biological ink!"

      (with apologies to the writers of Muppet Island).

  • Quite ingenious (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dancin_Santa ( 265275 ) <DancinSanta@gmail.com> on Thursday June 02, 2005 @02:09AM (#12702099) Journal
    He takes a tip from the silicon chip makers and uses the same type of technology to etch a pattern in a wafer. Then he creates a mold (like a mask, not like the stuff growing in the crotches of slashbots) which he can use repeatedly as a printing template.

    Since a lot of bacteria grow resistant to antibiotics, it makes sense to use this kind of "printing press" to study how they create their protective biofilm. As a species, we are slowly succumbing to our own success at killing off bacteria. However the rise of super-bacteria that are immune to our medicines is a huge worry. If this type of research can shine some light on why these bacteria are so resistant and how we can control them to be less dangerous to us, then we will be able to hold off our extinction for a few more years.

    • Re:Quite ingenious (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MAdMaxOr ( 834679 )
      >> then we will be able to hold off our extinction for a few more years.

      We're not in danger of becoming extinct from bacteria resistance. We adapt too.

    • Re:Quite ingenious (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Since a lot of bacteria grow resistant to antibiotics, it makes sense to use this kind of "printing press" to study how they create their protective biofilm.

      Antibiotics resistance usually has little to do with biofilm structures, more with genetic adaptations that alter the original target of the antibiotic, making the bacteria resistant to it. When a bacterium happens to combine a series of those adaptations, it becomes multiple drug resistant, which is where the actual problem lies that we're starting t

  • old news (Score:3, Insightful)

    by helfen ( 791121 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @02:11AM (#12702107)
    Stanislaw Lem predicts it about 20-30 years ago in some of his novel.
    • And now, with a bacterial printing press, they can read it. Just what we need, literate bacteria.

      KFG

  • Yay Finally (Score:3, Funny)

    by inflex ( 123318 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @02:14AM (#12702112) Homepage Journal
    Now I can get my [fake mail order] University Degree /and/ real [bacterial] culture diversity all on the same certificate.... just like if I had gone to Univeristy and dorm-hopped, or eaten cafeteria food.

  • Oh-Oh (Score:2, Funny)

    by kabz ( 770151 )
    Lets hope this doesn't get combined with the http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/03/033023 8 [slashdot.org]sushi printing cartridge ...

    With hilarious consequences.



    • Homer at sushi bar - "What is number 23? I haven't had that one yet".

      Waiter - "Number 23 is Poison Fish".

      Homer - "Poision!!"

      Waiter - "Do not be concerned about eating poison fish it is the head chef's speciality, also there is a map to the hospital on the back of your menu."

  • Really play the game of Life!!!!

  • bacterial computation (Score:5, Informative)

    by carcosa30 ( 235579 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @02:22AM (#12702141)
    This sounds like a good way to study computational properties of bacterial colonies. By printing them like this, perhaps they would be able to get them to behave in ways that would perform useful information processing. It might also end up acting as some sort of "interface" to DNA computation.

    Whether we'd be able to get them to behave in reproducible ways would be the question.

    Here are some links. The first has some interesting photos of bacterial colonies-- similar to cellular automata, because hey! They are! And the second is a link to an article on bacterial colony computation. Or maybe they're both to Goatse. You won't know until you click.

    http://alnk.org/dankwish [alnk.org]
    http://alnk.org/nearseal [alnk.org]

  • Sounds familar... (Score:4, Funny)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @02:25AM (#12702154)
    Just remember not to use anti-bacterial soap on your bacterial printer. Otherwise, you will void the warrantry.

  • Here... (Score:2, Funny)

    by UniXY ( 888820 )
    have a copy of my latest research on flesh eating bacteria. Be sure to note the texture!
  • Even as you are reading this, you are being infected by...

  • Game of Life (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Craig Ringer ( 302899 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @02:40AM (#12702181) Homepage Journal
    I can't possibly be the only one who immediately thought "game of life" ... can I?

    Too bad it'd never work - not unless you could find some REALLY weird bacteria, anyway.
    • I can't possibly be the only one who immediately thought "game of life" ... can I?

      No, you could not.

    • Most water supplies have a scummy film that grows on the inside of the pipes (even copper pipes), the film is impervious to chlorinated water. Water companies want a simple way to remove it.
    • I thought it straight away too ;)

      Too bad it'd never work - not unless you could find some REALLY weird bacteria, anyway.

      For the 'standard' rules of the Game of Life, this is probably true. Remember though that the rules are changeable; with most real bacteria you've just got a higher chance of survival at higher densities, or some form of lifespan - each point lasting longer than a single turn, with the state of each turn also affecting the lifetime left and spread per unit.

      David Brin's Glory Season ta
  • If someone has come up with a way to "print out" bacteria, how long will it be before this capability is present in everyday printers, perhaps without the printer companies intending to allow such a thing? Imagine what could happen if someone spread a virus/worm that would print out billions of deadly (in real life, not just to your mp3 collection) bacteria. Up until now, I have always laughed at people who suggest that Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups would unleash a computer virus. After all, they're
  • I'd like to see a 2-D equivalent of a habitrail, where you have wells connected by thin tubes, with wires dunked in all over the place. Fill a well with neurons (or stem cells???) and start up a circuit you've programmed before to send specific analog or digital pulses to different wires. Then let it grow throughout the network with the circuit running. Would this not be an interesting way to learn about brain organization and also organic computing? Maybe you could even heat the wells differently or oth

  • Spatial Properties (Score:3, Interesting)

    by putko ( 753330 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @03:08AM (#12702258) Homepage Journal
    It seems a lot of interesting science happens at the spatial/topological/geometrical level.

    E.g. those bioplaques can be real killers. Models of bacteria that assume they are all evenly distributed in 2-space or 3-space really don't cut it.

    Same thing with blood vessels. They aren't solid tubes, like the plumbing in your house. There's all sorts of transverse stuff happening that doctors fail to model and take into consideration.

    Or materials science -- all the "edge effects" that people like to ignore, because they are necessarily messy.

    If this advance allows them to study different geometries of bacteria cheaply, that will be a big step -- they'll be able to run big batches of simulations of different layouts. Hopefully they'll get their models right and do better work.

  • Novel application of existing technology (Score:3, Informative)

    by StateOfTheUnion ( 762194 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @03:14AM (#12702282) Homepage
    I like the novel application of existing technologies. He's using agarose medium, pipetting, and casting into a photolithographic mold.

    One thing in the article that is a bit deceptive is that the article says that one can print with details as small as one micrometer . . . the size of a single bacterium. This may technically be true, but I doubt that controlling which individual bacterium are transferred (printed) or not is possible. And the neither the technique of pipetting bacteria nor regrowing bacteria on the agarose media is likely to have a resolution of one micrometer. Though the postulated one micrometer resolution may be possible, it is for all practical purposes impossible.

    • if you read the article (Langmuir) and then read what new scientist wrote, you can see that they screwed up by writing that it is possible to pattern single bacteria. the article hints that this might be the direction that the scientists are moving, but that they aren't at this level yet.
  • Censorship via penicillin! "My dog ate my homework" replaced by "my mom's medicine ate my homework" would be good fun, too...


  • I've dripped cheese on my printer a time or two as well, but it never seemed suitable for a Slashdot headline.

  • I was thinking about how I could maybe use these printers to make a bacteria t-shirt transfer but I ultimately decided to just sneeze on my shirt instead.
  • A printer which is full of bugs by design.
  • Why is this a good thing? I mean, how much can bacteria read anyway?
  • Perhaps we can print some bacterial colonies in classic LIFE patterson then let thenm breed and see how well it replciates the old computer game :-)

  • Well this is going to make Snail Mail (Score:3, Informative)

    by crovira ( 10242 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @08:34AM (#12703283) Homepage
    a thing of the past. You already have to watch out when opening hand addressed mail for anthrax and shit like that but you have just lowered the bar for spreading viri.

    Now it doesn't have to come by an email either.

    Send something that looks like junk mail to a congressman's home in the winter and you can just see the trail of death and destruction because the ink itself could kill you. (ebola 'flavoured' ink anyone?)

    I don't think this is too smart but the cat's out of the bag now. Pretty soon we're going to need transparent exo-skins to do anything. (Think about it.)

  • The killer "I'm Sorry" card... (Score:3, Funny)

    by IronChefMorimoto ( 691038 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @09:30AM (#12703731)
    "Lisa, look -- I'm really sorry I've been sleeping with my secretary at work. I never thought you'd come looking for me in the janitorial closet at 2am on a Sunday morning."

    "Harold -- there's no excuse for this -- I want a divorce, and I'm taking EVERYTHING! INCLUDING THE DOG!"

    "But, Lisa -- I really want to apologize -- this card says it all..."

    "Card? What? How pathetic...oh...wait...what a wonderful photo from our wedding, Harold..."

    "Yeah -- I made it myself with a new printer we got at the labs at the office..."

    [wife reads card -- eyes tear up -- lip trembles]

    "Oh, Harold...I love you so much...I accept your apology..."

    [wife tries to kiss husband]

    "Wait -- I'm not worthy of that kind of love just yet...give it time...so you know it's real again..."

    "You're right, Harold. I'll read this card over and over and remember that you're going to make an effort to be better and more faithful..."

    [28 days later]

    "Well, Harold -- it's the weirdest thing..."

    "What's that, doc?"

    "I have no idea how your wife got a case of bubonic plague. Did you guys have rats in your house?"

    "Nope. Really odd. Oh, well."

    "It's a mystery to me, Harold. She died such a painful death."

    "Yes...she did... Well, I'm off for an appointment. Gotta pick up my secretary. See ya doc!"

    IronChefMorimoto
  • I worked in printing for 11 years and have seen the various sores and cuts on many a pressman. Believe me, they've been printing bacteria for a long, long time.

    Pathogens, too!

    And diseases.

    Oh, and don't forget syndromes...

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