A gel that can be infused with live cells and nutrients makes a promising material for printing three-dimensional tissues such as artificial organs.

Dongsheng Liu at Tsinghua University in Beijing, Wenmiao Shu at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, UK, and their team made two water-based inks from peptides and synthetic DNA strands that form a stable hydrogel when mixed. The team printed layers of the gel to build up millimetre-scale structures (pictured). They also infused their inks with live mouse cells and showed that the cells survived the printing process and remained functional.

Credit: Dongsheng Liu and Wenmiao Shu, Angew. Chem. Int. Edn

Unlike some previous biocompatible scaffolds, the hydrogel is strong enough to keep its shape without swelling or shrinking, but it can also be broken down easily by DNA-digesting enzymes.

Angew. Chem. Int. Edn http://doi.org/f24b2n (2015)