A new bioprinter developed at a hackerspace can print living
cells for less than the cost of an iPod touch. 3-D bioprinters
have the potential to change the way medical research is
conducted, even print living tissue and replacement organs, but
they are expensive and highly specialized. They literally build
living structures, like blood vessels or skin tissue, cell by
cell, revolutionizing biomedical engineering. Unfortunately,
they’re expensive, rare, and require a Ph.D. (or two) to operate
successfully. Frustrated by their cost and exclusivity, a group
of makers at the DIYbio hackerspace BioCurious are developing a
system open to anyone with a soldering iron and a serious
passion for cell biology. The plans to build your own have been
thoroughly documented as an Instructable by Patrik D’haeseleer,
a genomics, bioinformatics, and computational biology researcher
who has worked in labs at the Harvard Medical School and is now
at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab. The printer can’t yet
produce a replacement