Biofabrication

How engineered materials and machines powered by living biological cells can tackle technological challenges in medicine, agriculture, and global security.

You are a biological machine whose movement is powered by skeletal muscle, just as a car is a machine whose movement is powered by an engine. If you can be built from the bottom up with biological materials, other machines can be as well. This is the conceptual starting point for bio-fabrication, the act of building with living cells--building with biology in the same way we build with synthetic materials. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Ritu Raman offers an accessible introduction to bioifabrication, arguing that it can address some of our greatest technological challenges.

After presenting the background information needed to understand the emergence and evolution of bio-fabrication and describing the fundamental technology that enables building with biology, Raman takes deep dives into four bio-fabrication applications that have the potential to affect our daily lives: tissue engineering, organs-on-a-chip, lab-grown meat and leather, and biohybrid machines. Organs-on-a-chip (devices composed of miniature model tissues), for example, could be used to test new medicines and therapies, and lab-grown meat could alleviate environmental damage done by animal farming. She shows that biological materials have abilities synthetic materials do not, including the ability to adapt dynamically to their environments. Exploring the principles of bio-fabrication, Raman tells us, should help us appreciate the beauty, adaptiveness, and persistence of the biological machinery that drives our bodies and our world.

Author: Ritu Raman
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 09/14/2021
Pages: 216
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.52lbs
Size: 6.90h x 4.90w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9780262542968

About the Author
Ritu Raman, an engineer, writer, and educator, has been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Science list and the MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators Under 35 list. She is d'Arbeloff Career Development Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT.