Tissue engineers and other biologists experiment with cheap InkJet printers. Don't throw away that out-of-date InkJet printer. Older model inkjets, although lacking in the newest bells and whistles, are finding second lives as inexpensive robots thatcan dependably dispense minuscule amounts of growth factors and other proteins and even whole cells, in any pattern, gradient, or grid that can be drawn. Whether it's enabling a few thousand crystallization experiments, depositing gradients of attractants and repellants to study how growing nerve cells respond, or creating a grid of mammalian cells for high-throughput screening, that printer gathering dust could be just the tool for the creative biologist.
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