ATLANTA (CBS Atlanta) – Who knew playing with Legos could prepare you for a medical career.
Scientists have found a way to stack human cells together to create 3D models of human tissue, reports Live Science.
The tissue, called organoids, is assembled on a cellular level. Strands of DNA come together and interlock. Cells with complementary strands of DNA clicked together, while cells with different DNA passed by each other.
“Getting all those communicating cells in place such that only the correct cells are touching and talking to one another is tough. We’ve figured out a good way of doing that,” said senior author Zev Gartner, an associate professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco.
In this way, the scientists can control which cells stick together and build a model of a human organ layer by layer.
They call the technique DNA programmed assembly of cells, or DPAC.
Right now they can only build layers about as thick as a human hair.
But once those technical limitations have been overcome, the researchers forsee a day when whole human organs can be grown within someone’s body.
The study is published in the journal Nature Methods.
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