{"id":81800,"date":"2018-08-17T11:04:45","date_gmt":"2018-08-17T18:04:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/bioengineers-borrow-from-electronics-industry-to-get-stem-cells-to-shape-up"},"modified":"2018-08-17T11:04:45","modified_gmt":"2018-08-17T18:04:45","slug":"bioengineers-borrow-from-electronics-industry-to-get-stem-cells-to-shape-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/bioengineers-borrow-from-electronics-industry-to-get-stem-cells-to-shape-up","title":{"rendered":"Bioengineers borrow from electronics industry to get stem cells to shape up"},"content":{"rendered":"

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To understand how cells in the body behave, bioengineers create miniature models of the cells\u2019 environment in their lab. But recreating this niche environment is incredibly complex in a controlled setting, because researchers are still learning all the factors that influence cell behavior and growth. By observing and then modifying their engineered mini-models, scientists are better able to identify those factors.<\/p>\n

This form of cellular research is essential to the study of regenerative medicine, which focuses on replacing or repairing damaged tissue, often through the use of stem cells<\/a>, a special population of cells<\/a> that can give rise to all tissues in the body. Bioengineers face the central question of regenerative medicine: what causes stem cells to grow, organize, and mature from a small population of cells to complex organs?<\/p>\n

To find an answer, a research team from the Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology borrowed a process commonly used in the electronics industry called micropatterning, in which the miniaturization of shapes increases the number of transistors on a circuit. The team created micropatterned shapes, coupled with machine learning, to see how confinement influences stem cell maturation and organization.<\/p>\n

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To understand how cells in the body behave, bioengineers create miniature models of the cells\u2019 environment in their lab. But recreating this niche environment is incredibly complex in a controlled setting, because researchers are still learning all the factors that influence cell behavior and growth. By observing and then modifying their engineered mini-models, scientists are [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11,269,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical","category-life-extension","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81800\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}