3D printed human tissues using DNA

Aside Posted on December 10, 2015 Updated on November 7, 2022

As mentioned by Professor Gartner of UCSF, ¨have developed a technique to build tiny models of human tissue called organoids. The technique uses DNA to guide the assembly of cells into organoids. This technique is called DNA Programmed Assembly of Cells (DPAC). The research team created several organoid arrays mimicking human tissues such as mammary glands. The research was published in the journal Nature Methods on Aug. 31, 2015.

This technique incubates cells with snippets of single strands of DNA  The DNA attaches to the cell’s outer membrane. The incubated cell attaches to other cells that are incubated with matching DNA strands. In other words, the cell doesn’t attach with other incubated cells if their DNA sequence does not match. A cell can be incubated with more than one type of DNA cell. This allows the cell to attach to different types of cells. This technique is similar to playing with Legos. A lego piece can attach to other lego pieces if they have matching sides. This simple trick allows lego pieces to be combined to build a very large variety of toys.  Similarly, DPAC uses DNA strands attached to cells to create different types of organoids.¨

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Programmed synthesis of three-dimensional tissues.

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