É possível montar tecidos artificiais com gotículas de água?

Fonte do vídeo: 
Science Friday

Trabalho original:
A Tissue-Like Printed Material

Science 5 April 2013: 
Vol. 340 no. 6128 pp. 48-52 
DOI: 10.1126/science.1229495


Living cells communicate and cooperate to produce the emergent properties of tissues. Synthetic mimics of cells, such as liposomes, are typically incapable of cooperation and therefore cannot readily display sophisticated collective behavior. We printed tens of thousands of picoliter aqueous droplets that become joined by single lipid bilayers to form a cohesive material with cooperating compartments. Three-dimensional structures can be built with heterologous droplets in software-defined arrangements. The droplet networks can be functionalized with membrane proteins; for example, to allow rapid electrical communication along a specific path. The networks can also be programmed by osmolarity gradients to fold into otherwise unattainable designed structures. Printed droplet networks might be interfaced with tissues, used as tissue engineering substrates, or developed as mimics of living tissue.


 

Microscopic Movie Stars

Fonte: Science Friday

Photographer Roman Vishniac is perhaps best-known for documenting Jewish communities in Eastern Europe before World War II, but he also was a science buff. In the 1950s-1970s, with funding from the Educational Testing Service, the National Science Foundation and others, he made educational science films, featuring footage he shot through his microscope. Vishniac was a pioneer of cinemicroscopy (as he called it). The craft has changed with digital photography, says Dutch photographer Wim van Egmond, who has won numerous awards for his photomicrographs. van Egmond explains some of the techniques he uses to capture the micro-world in action