{"id":297797,"date":"2026-01-22T14:50:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T14:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/297797\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T14:50:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T14:50:10","slug":"elephant-in-the-tiny-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/297797\/","title":{"rendered":"Elephant in the (tiny) room"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"article-content\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>              <img data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/3D-printing-inside-living-cell---324746.jpg\"  alt=\"An elephant figure on a grainy gray background.\" class=\"w-100\" decoding=\"async\"\/><br \/>\n              An elephant figure on a grainy gray background.<\/p>\n<p>            Credit:<br \/>\n              Adv. Mater.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-content\">What do you do when you know how to work with biological materials and are experts in 3D printing at small resolutions? Create this <a href=\"https:\/\/advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1002\/adma.202519286\" shape=\"rect\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">10 \u00b5m long elephant inside a living cell<\/a>, of course. \u201cWe were just curious if this can be done because nobody has ever done it before,\u201d says Maru\u0161a Mur, a biophotonics researcher and postdoctoral fellow in <a href=\"https:\/\/humarlab.ijs.si\/\" shape=\"rect\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Matja\u017e Humar<\/a>\u2019s lab at the Jo\u017eef Stefan Institute.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-content\">The team tested dozens of light-curable polymers used in 3D printing and found one that was biocompatible. After injecting a droplet of the material into a cell, they scanned a tightly focused infrared laser beam on it to polymerize it and create a variety of structures, including optical gratings, barcodes for cell tracking, and elephants. Some cells died because their membranes tore, but many lived normally and even divided, passing on the little elephant treasure to their daughter cells.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-content\">Credit: Adv. Mater. <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1002\/adma.202519286\" shape=\"rect\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read the paper here<\/a>. (2026, DOI: 10.1002\/adma.202519286)<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-content\">Do science. Take pictures. Win money. <a href=\"https:\/\/cen.acs.org\/collections\/chemistry-in-pictures\/submit-your-photo.html\" shape=\"rect\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Enter our photo contest<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-content\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cen.acs.org\/collections\/chemistry-in-pictures.html\" shape=\"rect\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">See more Chemistry in Pictures<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 An elephant figure on a grainy gray background. Credit: Adv. Mater. What do you do when you&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[21126,18,1425,19,17,147571,147572,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-297797","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-3d-printing","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-elephant","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-living-cell","14":"tag-microstructures","15":"tag-science"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115939313209028834","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}