Here, it is shown that it is possible to create in vitro, in about 30 min, a tubular microenvironment with an elastic modulus and porosity consistent with human tissue that functionally mimicks a bona fide capillary using “live cell lithography”(LCL) to control the type and position of cells on a composite hydrogel scaffold. Furthermore, it is established that these constructs support the forces associated with blood flow and produce nutrient gradients similar to those measured in vivo. With LCL, capillaries can be constructed with single cell precision—no other method for tissue engineering offers such precision. Since the time required for assembly scales with the number of cells, this method is likely to be adapted first to create minimal functional units of human tissue that constitute organs, consisting of a heterogeneous population of 100–1000 cells, organized hierarchically to express a predictable function.
Sarveswaran K, Kurz V, Dong Z, Penny S, Tanaka T, Timp G, “Synthetic Capillaries to Control Microscopic Blood Flow”, Scientific Reports 2016, doi:10.1038/srep21885 Link to publication.
Perry N, Kennedy EM, Timp G, “Wiring Together Synthetic Bacterial Consortia to Create a Biological Integrated Circuit”, ACS Synthetic Biology 2016, doi:10.1021/acssynbio.6b00002 Link to publication.
Nelson EM, Mirsaidov U, Sarveswaran K, Perry N, Kurz V, Timp W, Timp G, “Ecology of a Simple Synthetic Biofilm”, The Physical Basis of Bacterial Quorum Communication Biological and Medical Physics, Biomedical Engineering 2015, pp 205-226, doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-1402-9_11# Link to publication.
Kurz V, Nelson EM, Perry N, Timp W, Timp G, “Epigenetic Memory Emerging from Integrated Transcription Bursts”, Biophys. J. 2013, 105, 6. doi: 10.1016/j.bpj.2013.08.010. Link to publication.
Nelson EM, Kurz V, Perry N, Kyrouac D, Timp G, “Biological Noise Abatement: Coordinating the Responses of Autonomous Bacteria to a Fluctuating Environment Using a Stochastic Bistable Switch”, ACS Synthet. Biol. 2014,doi: 10.1021/sb400052f Link to publication.
Lin C, Kolossov VL, Tsvid G, Trump L, Henry JJ, Henderson JL, Rund LA, Kenis PJA, Schook LB, Gaskins HR, Timp G, “Imaging in real-time with FRET the redox response of tumorigenic cells to glutathione perturbations in a microscale flow” Integrative Biology, 2010, doi: 10.1039/C0IB00071J. Link to publication.