(392j) Graduate Student Award Session: 3D-Bioprinting of Spatially Organized Bacterial Microcosmoi Using Chaotic Flows

Cells do not work alone but as collaborative micro-societies. Cells in human tissues are spatially organized, and these deposition patterns may have significant effects on their functionality. In the case of bacteria, spatial distribution (micro-biogeography) has also been suggested as a determinant of their behavior. Unfortunately, current microbiological techniques, which are more focused on the culture of single bacterial strains or well-mixed bacterial communities, fail to reproduce the micro-geography of polybacterial societies. Moreover, printing spatially-controlled scaffolds at high resolution is currently challenging.

Our group previously reported the development of a 3D-printing technique (chaotic bioprinting) using a Kenics static mixer to produce alginate-based and agar-based fibers exhibiting internal lamellar microstructures. In this contribution, we use chaotic bioprinting protocols to create fine-scale bacterial microcosmoi. This straightforward approach allows us to place various bacterial strains in these constructs to analyze how their spatial distribution may affect their social behavior and/or survival abilities. We demonstrate that these biological microsystems can exhibit a competitive dominance as a function of culture time, the development of hypoxic regions, and the degree of interface shared between the microcolonies.

Chaotic bioprinting enables the printing of cell-laden constructs with fine-scale deposition patterns. We envision that this technique will contribute to the development of more complex poly-bacterial microcosmoi, such as gut-microbiota models.