LEGO® bricks as building blocks for centimeter-scale biological environments: the case of plants.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Lind KR
PROVIDER: S-EPMC4071033 | biostudies-literature | 2014
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
LEGO® bricks as building blocks for centimeter-scale biological environments: the case of plants.
Lind Kara R KR Sizmur Tom T Benomar Saida S Miller Anthony A Cademartiri Ludovico L
PloS one 20140625 6
LEGO bricks are commercially available interlocking pieces of plastic that are conventionally used as toys. We describe their use to build engineered environments for cm-scale biological systems, in particular plant roots. Specifically, we take advantage of the unique modularity of these building blocks to create inexpensive, transparent, reconfigurable, and highly scalable environments for plant growth in which structural obstacles and chemical gradients can be precisely engineered to mimic soi ...[more]
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