Team:Peking/Project/3D/Future. Prospective of Bio-printing Bio-printing is not only a simple demonstration in our project, but it may also play an important part as an interface between physical environmental factors and organisms, as well as a vital inducer in highly organized biomaterial formation. For the first time, our project demonstrated that bio-printing is feasible even in weak and incoherent light. Biofilms are an aggregation of cells in which they adhere together on a surface.
Previous studies mainly focused on chemical-induced biofilm formation. Their limitations are usually inevitable because induction requires the chemical(s) to physically contact the receiver cells. A single bacterium is about 1μm long and its metabolic products are on the nanometer scale. With our highly-sensitive optically responsive Luminesensor, bio-printing by natural light is finally a reality. Figure 1. Products - OPX Biotechnologies. Yeast to make malaria drug on demand.
A natural biochemical pathway that produces the antimalarial drug artemisinin in the sweet wormwood plant has been fully reconstructed in yeast. The engineered yeast cells churn out high concentrations of a precursor that can be converted in a few steps into the first-line malaria drug. According to the team behind the advance, their semi-synthetic route should help smooth out seasonal variations in supply.
Semi-synthetic artemisinin has been in the pipeline since 2006, when Jay Keasling’s group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, US, reported rewriting the genome of ordinary brewer’s yeast to encourage it to make artemisinic acid.1 But piecing together a practical route for making the drug precursor in yeast and then transforming it into the finished product has proved tricky. It has remained cheaper and more straightforward to extract the drug from its natural source. Commercial cure? Sparks of creation. Chemists are at the forefront of synthetic biology, the burgeoning field that could soon create artificial life.
Ananyo Bhattacharya reports In ShortSynthetic biology is an emerging discipline at the interface of engineering and biology The world's first synthetic organism could be made in the next few monthsSome fear that moves to patent work in the area could block research in the future Scientists and research funders are still grappling with the ethics of creating artificial life In the not too distant future, a researcher or pharmaceutical firm attempting to synthesise a particularly tricky compound may not turn to chemistry. Instead, their first stop might be an online database of DNA building blocks where they can piece together a genetic program that, once slotted into bacteria or yeast, will churn out their product for them. 'Synthetic biology is potentially very controversial,' says chemical biologist John McCarthy, director of the Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre, UK. Arizona_State.pdf.