Researchers at the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus have created a pioneering, adaptive 3D printing system capable of pinpointing the locations of scattered organisms and gently relocating them to specific areas for interaction. This autonomous expertise will significantly reduce costs and streamline workflows for researchers in bioimaging, cybernetics, cryopreservation, and hybrid systems that integrate living organisms.
The findings are published in a reputable, peer-reviewed scientific journal. The researchers hold a patent-pending for their proprietary knowledge and expertise.
The system is capable of monitoring, collecting, and accurately positioning insects and other organisms, regardless of their mobility or static nature, within precise droplets or in motion. The pick-and-place technique, informed in real-time by visible and spatial information, adapts to ensure precise placement of the organisms.
According to Guebum Han, a former University of Minnesota mechanical engineering postdoctoral researcher and lead author, “The printer itself can behave like a human, with its ‘fingers’ mimicking the actions of hands, the machine’s visual system functioning as eyes, and the computer serving as the mind.” “The printer can dynamically adjust its processes in real-time to accommodate the transfer of biological samples, efficiently assembling them into a precise arrangement or sample.”
Typically, this complex process is accomplished through laborious manual efforts and extensive guidance, often yielding disparities in organismal performance. With this innovative system, the timeframe shrinks significantly for researchers, enabling them to deliver consistent results at an accelerated pace.
This technology has the potential to broaden the scope of organisms that can be preserved through cryopreservation, enable the preservation of remains from deceased individuals, accommodate organisms on irregular surfaces, and integrate them with materials and components in customised configurations. The development could also pave the way for crafting sophisticated entities, akin to superorganismal structures, which exist in complex societies such as those found in ant and bee colonies. As a direct consequence of this analysis, breakthroughs in self-sustaining bioprocessing will emerge, enabling real-time monitoring and assembly of biological entities.
This novel methodology has been employed to refine cryopreservation protocols for zebrafish embryos, a process previously accomplished through manual handling procedures. Thanks to this breakthrough, scientists have now found that their innovative approach can achieve the same outcome in just one-twelfth the time required by traditional methods. Another instance highlights the system’s remarkable adaptability as it monitored, detected, and relocated randomly moving beetles, subsequently integrating them into valuable units.
Researchers anticipate progressing their discoveries, integrating them with robotics to create portable technology suitable for space exploration. This could potentially allow researchers to collect organisms or samples in regions that would normally be unreachable.
Alongside Han, the University of Minnesota’s Department of Mechanical Engineering staff comprised graduate research assistants Kieran Smith and Daniel Wai Hou Ng, Assistant Professor JiYong Lee, Professor John Bischof, Professor Michael McAlpine, and former postdoctoral researchers Kanav Khosla and Xia Ouyang. In addition to this, the project collaborated with the Engineering Research Centre’s Advanced Technologies for the Preservation of Biological Systems team (ERC-ATP Bio).
The research received funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and Regenerative Medicine Minnesota.
