UC Science Today

A 3D bioprint of ‘living’ blood vessels may change the way researchers do biology. This, according to bioengineer Monica Moya of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Moya led a project that used a 3D printer and a ‘bio-ink’ to successfully print structures with living cells and biomaterials.

"We use the word ‘ink’, but it’s not quite an ink. It’s really just kind of a gel-like material that the cells are inside of. The challenge with what we’re doing is we’re actually printing the cells with the material, this gel-like substance. Other people will print just the scaffolding and they’ll use just the material and then they’ll add the cells later on. The difference is that when you don’t print he cells with the material, you’re losing that ability to control where the cells are going to be spatially."

The hope is that their ‘living blood vessels’ may someday literally feed the end goal of 3D bioprinting – that is, the ability to print organs and tissues.

"So what you need in order to really make these 3D strucgtures, is a vasculature."

A 3D bioprint of ‘living’ blood vessels may change the way researchers do biology. This, according to bioengineer Monica Moya of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Moya led a project that used a 3D printer and a ‘bio-ink’ to successfully print structures with living cells and biomaterials.

"We use the word ‘ink’, but it’s not quite an ink. It’s really just kind of a gel-like material that the cells are inside of. The challenge with what we’re doing is we’re actually printing the cells with the material, this gel-like substance. Other people will print just the scaffolding and they’ll use just the material and then they’ll add the cells later on. The difference is that when you don’t print he cells with the material, you’re losing that ability to control where the cells are going to be spatially."

The hope is that their ‘living blood vessels’ may someday literally feed the end goal of 3D bioprinting – that is, the ability to print organs and tissues.

"So what you need in order to really make these 3D strucgtures, is a vasculature."

It turns out that clouds can’t be explained by your typical school science fair experiment. Recent research at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has identified a new mechanism behind the not-so-fluffy science of cloud droplet formation. Cloud droplets in the atmosphere never form from pure water but require a seed, or a small aerosolized particle that may originate anywhere from ocean sea spray to diesel combustion. Physical chemist Kevin Wilson and his team found that the size of a droplet depends on the particle’s interaction with water, rather than its ability to dissolve.

"What we found is that, unlike conventional thinking, organic molecules are actually, rather than dissolving in the bulk of the droplet to facilitate droplet formation, they reside at the surface of the cloud droplet. And their main mechanism for forming cloud droplets is lowering of surface tension."

Given the important effects of clouds on the atmosphere, Wilson hopes these findings will improve the accuracy of climate change models.

It turns out that clouds can’t be explained by your typical school science fair experiment. Recent research at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has identified a new mechanism behind the not-so-fluffy science of cloud droplet formation. Cloud droplets in the atmosphere never form from pure water but require a seed, or a small aerosolized particle that may originate anywhere from ocean sea spray to diesel combustion. Physical chemist Kevin Wilson and his team found that the size of a droplet depends on the particle’s interaction with water, rather than its ability to dissolve.

"What we found is that, unlike conventional thinking, organic molecules are actually, rather than dissolving in the bulk of the droplet to facilitate droplet formation, they reside at the surface of the cloud droplet. And their main mechanism for forming cloud droplets is lowering of surface tension."

Given the important effects of clouds on the atmosphere, Wilson hopes these findings will improve the accuracy of climate change models.

How might your brain respond to a word spoken in a sentence, rather than alone or without meaningful context? Rather than looking at how the brain responds to single words, neuroscientist Alexander Huth of the University of California, Berkeley wanted to create a more natural environment to study semantics, or the meaning of language.

"We call this a “naturalistic” approach to this kind of experiment, where instead of…showing people single words or single sentences, we’re just showing them a continuous narrative, a full story, as language is used. And that has certain advantages in that we see sort of how the brain actually works when you’re understanding language."

With these conditions, the researchers then built models able to predict brain activity, and tested them by playing unfamiliar radio stories for the subjects.

"It turns out that our models, based on semantics, predict really really well in a bunch of brain areas."

Huth and his team are currently looking into other nuances of language and the human brain, such as whether the response is different when it comes to speaking versus hearing.

How might your brain respond to a word spoken in a sentence, rather than alone or without meaningful context? Rather than looking at how the brain responds to single words, neuroscientist Alexander Huth of the University of California, Berkeley wanted to create a more natural environment to study semantics, or the meaning of language.

"We call this a “naturalistic” approach to this kind of experiment, where instead of…showing people single words or single sentences, we’re just showing them a continuous narrative, a full story, as language is used. And that has certain advantages in that we see sort of how the brain actually works when you’re understanding language."

With these conditions, the researchers then built models able to predict brain activity, and tested them by playing unfamiliar radio stories for the subjects.

"It turns out that our models, based on semantics, predict really really well in a bunch of brain areas."

Huth and his team are currently looking into other nuances of language and the human brain, such as whether the response is different when it comes to speaking versus hearing.

A new version of biology’s tree of life will likely make it into the science textbooks. Microbiologist Karthik Anantharaman of the University of California, Berkeley helped put together an updated version containing over one thousand newly discovered microscopic organisms.

"Over the last 15 years, we have collected greater than a thousand genomes of organisms that have never been cultured or, say, studied in the lab."

Narrator: The last big revolution of the tree of life took place about 30 years ago, when scientists declared 3 main categories of life. This included bacteria and archaea, which are single celled organisms, and eukaryote, which includes organisms like animals and plants. But despite this clarification, many microbes remained mysterious.

"When you look at, say, all of these normal microbes that say we have discovered, we don’t know what about 50% of their genes do. Now imagine the potential that's there to understand what these guys can do and then harness that for the future. So be it helping us treat diseases, digest food better, looking at our own microbiome and harnessing its potential."

A portable biodetection device that’s bound for space so astronauts can easily give themselves health check-ups, has several terrestrial applications, too. Radiobiologist Matthew Coleman of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory explains.

"We’re really looking at science and technology impact with our handheld diagnostic device and providing really a generic platform for space travel, field medicine, in the clinic and in the environment. And I think this is also going to help to really push this idea of telemedicine and actually being able to do things like epidemiology. We could really get a lot of information about how we’re really treating people and who’s benefiting the most from which treatment."

And this includes cancer patients.

"To understand how people are responding to chemotherapy treatments throughout their whole process of being treated, so that we could quickly catch those relapsed or refractory cancers."

A new version of biology’s tree of life will likely make it into the science textbooks. Microbiologist Karthik Anantharaman of the University of California, Berkeley helped put together an updated version containing over one thousand newly discovered microscopic organisms.

"Over the last 15 years, we have collected greater than a thousand genomes of organisms that have never been cultured or, say, studied in the lab."

Narrator: The last big revolution of the tree of life took place about 30 years ago, when scientists declared 3 main categories of life. This included bacteria and archaea, which are single celled organisms, and eukaryote, which includes organisms like animals and plants. But despite this clarification, many microbes remained mysterious.

"When you look at, say, all of these normal microbes that say we have discovered, we don’t know what about 50% of their genes do. Now imagine the potential that's there to understand what these guys can do and then harness that for the future. So be it helping us treat diseases, digest food better, looking at our own microbiome and harnessing its potential."

A portable biodetection device that’s bound for space so astronauts can easily give themselves health check-ups, has several terrestrial applications, too. Radiobiologist Matthew Coleman of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory explains.

"We’re really looking at science and technology impact with our handheld diagnostic device and providing really a generic platform for space travel, field medicine, in the clinic and in the environment. And I think this is also going to help to really push this idea of telemedicine and actually being able to do things like epidemiology. We could really get a lot of information about how we’re really treating people and who’s benefiting the most from which treatment."

And this includes cancer patients.

"To understand how people are responding to chemotherapy treatments throughout their whole process of being treated, so that we could quickly catch those relapsed or refractory cancers."