Bacterial Printing Press

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."

Comments

Hmm.

[FireballX301]

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.

Spatial Properties

[putko]

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.