Team:KU Leuven/Future/Future collaboration

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Future

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main

Research

Interlab

Modeling

Outreach

Future

Team

Notebook

Future collaboration

Future collaboration with iGEM TU Delft

The TU Delft IGEM 2015 team aims to offer a reproducible and automated way of forming bacterial biofilms with their 3D Micro(be) Printer. They also want to obtain a cheap and customizable method of creating biofilms for testing purposes. Therefore they engineered bacteria that can be linked to each other through nanowires generating a well-defined biofilm structure.

The similarity between our projects is the formation of a certain structure with bacteria. In our project, the engineered bacteria form a pattern on their own, in a controllable way. If our strains are deposited by the TU Delft Printer, a pattern in three dimensions can be formed.

A wide range of applications could result out of this collaboration, for example bone formation. Recently, people are using a 3D printed implant made of titanium for hip transplantations. Here, the patient’s CT scan is used to design an exact replica of the femoral head. Our project could optimise this design by using bacteria who could form and precipitate calcium. In this way a porous structure similar to bones can be formed. The advantages will be that this could improve “goodness of fit” and reduce the risk of having a second hip surgery. If a part of the pattern is formed spontaneously by engineered bacteria, the production costs will be lower and an even more refined structure can be formed.

Another application is the production of miniature electrical circuits. This is possible if the bacteria deposit conducting materials. By 3D printing this precipitate, we can make conducting micro wires.

In our project, cell-cell communication is used to form a certain network. Hereby our cell-cell communication could form an alternative or addition of the formation of specific biofilms with nanowires by the TU Delft team. For example, it could be possible that our cells B are adapted to produce nanowires in a predicted pattern.

So, if we compare our projects we can conclude that a lot of future applications are possible. This proves the need of fundamental research in combination with practical engineering.