Bacteria are able to do everything from breaking down toxins to synthesizing vitamins. When they move, they create strands of a material called cellulose that is useful for wound patches and other medical applications. Until now, bacterial cellulose could only be grown on a flat surface — and few parts of our body are perfectly flat. In a paper published today in Science Advances, researchers created a special ink that contains these living bacteria. Because it is an ink, it can be used to 3D print in shapes — including a T-shirt, a face, and circles — and not just flat sheets.
Bacterial cellulose is free of debris, holds a lot of water, and has a soothing effect once it’s applied on wounds. Because it’s a natural material, our body is unlikely to reject it, so it has many potential applications for creating skin transplants, biosensors, or tissue envelopes to carry and protect organs before transplanting them.
The amount of research on skin synthesis and augmentation is surprising.