Date of Last Revision

2023-05-03 05:04:49

Major

Chemical Engineering - BS/MS

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Date of Expected Graduation

Spring 2018

Abstract

The purpose of producing features on bacterial cellulose (BC) is to facilitate the elongation and alignment for cells, in this case Normal Human Dermal Fibroblast (NHDF) cells. The elongated cells have applications in wound healing, tissue engineering, disease diagnostics, and many other fields. Experiments were run to test the effectiveness of transferring features to BC sheets from features induced by fracturing on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and those duplicated from molds with existing features. The features were duplicated to BC sheets by either air drying or Guided Assembly-Based Biolithography (GAB). The research results showed that fracture inducing on PDMS produced very small features with irregularities that prevented further use. Features from existing molds produced better and more consistent results on BC. Air drying resulted in very shallow features on BC sheets that were inconsistent due to air bubbles being trapped underneath the BC sheet. GAB produced much more uniform features that showed a statistically significant increase in the elongation of NDHF cells compared to the control when the features were 50 μm wide, 700 μm deep and 400 μm apart. No strong relationship was found between the features and cell alignment.

Research Sponsor

Bi-min Zhang Newby

First Reader

Lingyu Liu

Second Reader

Edward Evans

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