Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Designer Self-Assembling Peptide
Nanofi ber Scaffolds
Shuguang Zhang , Hidenori Yokoi , Fabrizio Gelain , and Akihiro Horii
1
Introduction
Nearly all tissue cells are embedded in 3-D microenvironment in the body sur-
rounded by nanoscale extracellular matrix. On the other hand, nearly all tissue cells
have been studied in 2-D using Petri dishes, multi-well plates or glass slides coated
with various substrates. How can one reconcile the apparent disparity? Likewise,
although millions of cell biology papers have been published using the 2-D culture
systems, one must ask how we can be so certain the results obtained from the 2-D
system truly refl ect the in vivo conditions. Science, after all, is to constantly ask
questions, big and small. As the late legendary Francis Crick eloquently put it “You
should always ask questions, the bigger the better. If you ask big questions, you get
big answers.”
2
Two D or Not Two D
Although Petri dish has had an enormous impact on modern biology, the fl at bottom
nature of the Petri dish culture system, including multi-well plates, glass coverslips,
etc., is less than ideal for study tissue cells for several reasons: (1) It is a 2-D system,
which is in sharp contrast to the 3-D environment of natural tissues both in animals
and plants. (2) The Petri dish fl at surface without coating is rigid and inert, again in
sharp contrast to the in vivo environment where cells intimately interact with the
S. Zhang (
*
) • H. Yokoi • F. Gelain • A. Horii
Center for Biomedical Engineering, Center for Bits & Atoms
Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Cambridge , MA , USA
e-mail: shuguang@mit.edu
