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 biofabrication 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 biofabrication arguing that it can address some of our
greatest technological challenges. After presenting the background information needed to
understand the emergence and evolution of biofabrication and describing the fundamental
technology that enables building with biology Raman takes deep dives into four biofabrication
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 medicine 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 biofabrication
Raman tells us should help us appreciate the beauty adaptiveness and persistence of the
biological machinery that drives our bodies and our world.
