(570f) 3D-Bioprinting of Spatially Organized Bacterial Microcosmoi Using Chaotic Flows
AIChE Annual Meeting
2019
2019 AIChE Annual Meeting
Materials Engineering and Sciences Division
Bioprinting of Scaffolds, Tissues, and Organs
Wednesday, November 13, 2019 - 5:00pm to 5:18pm
Our group previously reported the development of a 3D-printing technique (chaotic bioprinting) using a Kenics static mixer to produce alginate-based and agar-based fibers exhibiting internal lamellar microstructures. In this contribution, we use chaotic bioprinting protocols to create fine-scale bacterial microcosmoi. This straightforward approach allows us to place various bacterial strains in these constructs to analyze how their spatial distribution may affect their social behavior and/or survival abilities. We demonstrate that these biological microsystems can exhibit a competitive dominance as a function of culture time, the development of hypoxic regions, and the degree of interface shared between the microcolonies.
Chaotic bioprinting enables the printing of cell-laden constructs with fine-scale deposition patterns. We envision that this technique will contribute to the development of more complex poly-bacterial microcosmoi, such as gut-microbiota models.