[DIYbio] Re: [biocurious] Looking for diy tissue engineering experiment

We've been growing frogs and chickens in tissue culture for more than
100 years (Harrison, R.G., 1907, Burrows,M.T., 1910) ... so with a
little bit of your kids own intuition of finding some at-home
replacements for eukaryotic/multicellular media and phosphate+CO2
(through air in incubator) buffers, It is possible to do this stuff at
home.

The problem comes with obtaining the starting materials, do you want
to start by teaching your kids how to dislocate the vertebra of a
mouse, frog, or chicken? Chicken embryos (i.e. fertilized and warmed
eggs) are pretty easy to work with.

Here's a good intro experiment:

Cardiac cells beating in culture: a laboratory exercise
http://www.nabt.org/websites/institution/File/pdfs/american_biology_teacher/2007/069-07-0407.pdf


On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 1:37 PM, Robb Greathouse
<robb.greathouse@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks, son is interested in tissue engineering so thought I would see if
> there was anything available.  If there is anything that is a good starter
> experiment that would be great.
>
> Robb,
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 11:32 PM, Patrik D'haeseleer <patrikd@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Keep in mind that working with live mammalian cells - and especially
>> human cells - is quite dangerous. Those cells don't have an immune
>> system, so they will be very prone to catching all sorts of diseases -
>> diseases which can then infect you or your children! Essentially,
>> you've made a nice little pathogen incubator. You should definitely
>> not consider growing human cells without a biosafety level 2 facility.
>>
>> The further you get away from human the safer. There may be some
>> insect cell lines that may be safer to work with, but I don't know too
>> much about those. Anyone?
>>
>> One experiment that would be a lot safer, and quite approachable, is
>> decellularization. Essentially, you can use detergents such as SDS to
>> dissolve away the cells in a piece of tissue, leaving only the
>> extracellular matrix (ECM), that is, the connective tissue in between
>> the cells.
>>
>> Here's some nice examples:
>>
>>
>> http://designmind.frogdesign.com/articles/health/medical-breakthroughs.html
>> http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080113/full/news.2008.435.html
>> http://plasticbiology.net/post/10162548845/heart-before-and-after
>> http://plasticbiology.net/post/10773803301/was-steak
>>
>> Patrik
>>
>> On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 6:02 PM, Robb Greathouse
>> <robb.greathouse@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > I am looking for a tissue engineering experiment/kit that could be done
>> > at
>> > home.  Want to get my kids started.
>> >
>> > Does anyone know of any that are available or good websites for them?
>> >
>> > Thanks,
>> >
>> > Robb,
>> >
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>
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--
Nathan McCorkle
Rochester Institute of Technology
College of Science, Biotechnology/Bioinformatics

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