Grow Your Bioink
Why grow bioink?
Our dye and ink we use nowadays in industry is polluting our environment and difficult to recycle! Regarding to this environmental pollution problem, we came up with an idea to grow ink from a soil bacteria that naturally produces beautiful pigments. These biosynthesized pigments are organic and recyclable. Our ultimate goal is to integrate the bioink into printers, pens, and the dying process in manufacturing industry.
Phases
This exploration is divided into 3 phases:
Phase
1
2
Tasks
Grow bacteria that produce pigment and find out the optimal growth conditions and extract the pigments
Integrate into a continuous ink printer
Study the effect of bioink on marine organisms
Materials & Methods
We purchased 4 differnet colored bacteria from Carolina Biological Supply
1. Pigmented Bacteria Set, Tube Cultures, Living (Item #154745)
- Micrococcus luteus (yellow)
- Rhodococcus rhodochrous (pink)
- Sarcina aurantiaca (orange-yellow)
- Serratia marcescens D1 (red).
2. Microcentrifuge (4000 rpm)
3. Incubator
Reference
Charkoudian LK, Fitzgerald JT, Khosla C, Champlin A (2010) In Living Color: Bacterial Pigments as an Untapped Resource in the Classroom and Beyond. PLoS Biol 8(10): e1000510. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000510
Haddix P.L. and Werner T. F. (2000) Spectrophotometric Assay of Gene Expression: Serratia marcescens Pigmentation. Bioscene. Volume 26(4). http://papa.indstate.edu/amcbt/volume_26/v26-4p3-13.pdf
Pigment Formation in L-forms of Serratia marcescens https://goo.gl/Rpxhri
Extraction, Characterization and Application studies of red pigment of halophile Serratia marcescens KH1R KM035849 isolated from Kharaghoda soil. http://www.ijpab.com/form/2014%20Volume%202,%20issue%206/IJPAB-2014-2-6-160-168.pdf