Marine Biologist Modifies Bioprinting for the Creation of Bionic Coral

Quick Answer Box

What are 3D bioprinted bionic corals? Bionic corals are artificial coral structures created using 3D bioprinting technology that mimic the physical and chemical properties of natural coral skeletons and tissues. These structures can host living microalgae, enabling photosynthesis and offering potential applications in bioenergy production, coral reef restoration, and biotechnology research. Led by marine biologist Daniel Wangpraseurt at UCSD, this breakthrough uses specialized bioinks containing symbiotic algae and biocompatible polymers to recreate the complex coral-algal symbiosis system with micron-level precision.

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Corals are dying globally. In the face of climate change and global warming, we can expect some severe consequences, which in turn directly affects marine life. In what is panning out to be a mass extinction event, coral reefs have been dangerously threatened by toxic substances and excess carbon dioxide for years, causing the certain death of may of these diverse marine invertebrates. Once the coral is dead, the reefs will also die and erode, destroying important marine life, that would otherwise feed and spawn on it.

Considering that scientists have predicted that nearly all coral reefs will disappear in 20 years, it is crucial that we protect corals and learn from them. For the expanding field of biotechnology, untapped resources like corals hold great potential, as bioactive compounds for cancer research or simply as an inspiration for the production of bioenergy and bioproducts (Nature Communications, 2020).

The Race Against Coral Extinction

Global coral reef systems are facing an unprecedented crisis. According to research published in Nature Communications, coral reefs support approximately 25% of all marine species despite covering less than 1% of the ocean floor (Hughes et al., 2018). The economic value of coral reef ecosystems is estimated at $375 billion annually through fisheries, tourism, and coastal protection services (IPBES, 2019).

Coral bleaching events, caused by rising ocean temperatures and acidification, have increased in frequency and severity over the past three decades. The Great Barrier Reef alone has experienced four mass bleaching events since 2016, with some areas losing up to 50% of their coral cover (Hughes et al., 2017).

Daniel Wangpraseurt: Bridging Marine Biology and Bioprinting

In an interview with 3DPrint.com, interdisciplinary marine biologist Daniel Wangpraseurt, from the University of California San Diego (UCSD)’s Department of NanoEngineering, explained how bioprinting technology was a pivotal point in his work to develop bionic 3D printed corals as a new tool for coral-inspired biomaterials that can be used in algal biotechnology, coral reef conservation and in coral-algal symbiosis research.

“For many years I have been studying how corals optimize light management and discovered that there are lots of interesting evolutionary tricks, such as different growth forms and material properties, so I became interested in copying these strategies and developing artificial materials that could host living microalgae, just like corals do in nature,” revealed Wangpraseurt (3DPrint.com, 2020).

Wangpraseurt’s research background spans marine biology, photonics, and bioengineering. His interdisciplinary approach has enabled him to bridge the gap between traditional coral ecology and cutting-edge manufacturing technologies.

Understanding Coral-Algal Symbiosis

As one of the most productive ecosystems globally, coral reefs use photosynthesis to convert carbon dioxide into energy that they in turn use for food. Even though light provides the energy that fuels reef productivity, key nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus are also required, but are found in very low quantities in warm tropical oceans where coral reefs are generally found, making scientists wonder how these marine animals have managed to create a competitive habitat with such limited resources (Wangpraseurt et al., 2019).

Wangpraseurt described that, while different corals have developed a plethora of geometries to achieve such capabilities, they are all characterized by an animal tissue-hosting microalgae, built upon a calcium carbonate skeleton that serves as mechanical support and as a scattering medium to optimize light delivery toward otherwise shaded algal-containing tissues (Kühl et al., 1995).

“Taking what we learned about corals and biomaterials, we began working on a project to develop a synthetic, symbiotic system using a 3D bioprinting approach. We know corals have both animal cells and algal cells, and, so far, we have mimicked the animal part of the corals, that is, the physical and chemical microhabitat that partially controls the activity of the algal cells” (Wangpraseurt et al., 2020).

Comparison: Natural vs. Bionic Coral

Feature	Natural Coral	Bionic Coral
Composition	Calcium carbonate skeleton + living coral tissue	PEGDA polymer skeleton + GelMA bioink + CNC
Algal Integration	Symbiotic Symbiodinium algae naturally hosted	Microalgae mixed directly into bioink during printing
Light Management	Evololved over millions of years	Engineered using optical principles
Scalability	Limited by natural growth rates (1-2 cm/year)	Manufacturable on-demand with bioprinters
Customization	Fixed by genetics and environment	Adjustable geometry and material properties
Vulnerability	Susceptible to bleaching and ocean acidification	Can be engineered for resilience

Advanced Bioprinting Technology

At UCSD, Wangpraseurt expects to continue recreating coral-inspired photosynthetic biomaterial structures using a new bioprinting technique and a customized 3D bioprinter capable of mimicking functional and structural traits of the coral-algal symbiosis. Along with fellow researchers from UCSD, the University of Cambridge, the University of Copenhagen and the University of Technology Sydney, and thanks to a grant from the European Union‘s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the team reported the results of their work on bioinspired materials that was published in the journal Nature Communications earlier this year (Wangpraseurt et al., 2020).

“We want to go further and not just develop similar physical microhabitat but also modulate cellular interactions, by mimicking biochemical pathways of symbiosis. We hope that this allows us to not only optimize photosynthesis and cell growth, but also to gain a deeper understanding of how the symbiosis works in nature. By doing so, we can improve our understanding of stress phenomena such as coral bleaching, which is largely responsible for global coral death” (Wangpraseurt et al., 2020).

Bioink Composition and Materials Science

The team developed a 3D printing platform that mimics morphological features of living coral tissue and the underlying skeleton with micron resolution, including their optical and mechanical properties. It uses a two-step continuous light projection-based approach for multilayer 3D bioprinting and the artificial coral tissue constructs are fabricated with a novel bioink solution, in which the symbiotic microalgae are mixed with a photopolymerizable gelatin-methacrylate (GelMA) hydrogel and cellulose-derived nanocrystals (CNC). Similarly, the artificial skeleton is 3D printed with a polyethylene glycol diacrylate-based polymer (PEGDA) (Wangpraseurt et al., 2020).

Comparison: Bioink Materials for Coral Bioprinting

Material	Type	Function	Advantages	Limitations
GelMA	Photopolymerizable hydrogel	Tissue matrix base	Biocompatible, tunable mechanical properties	Limited structural strength
CNC	Cellulose nanocrystals	Optical enhancer	Light scattering, mechanical reinforcement	Complex synthesis process
PEGDA	Polyethylene glycol diacrylate	Skeleton material	High resolution, stable structure	Non-biodegradable
Alginate	Polysaccharide	Alternative base	Low cost, easy to use	Poor cell adhesion
Collagen	Natural protein	Experimental option	Excellent biocompatibility	Expensive, variable quality

“We used a 3D bioprinter that had been developed for medical purposes, which we modulated and further developed a specific bioink for corals. A lot of the work was related to the optimization of the material properties to ensure cell viability. Having the right bioink for our algal strains was crucial as if we were to use mixtures commonly used for human cell cultures, the cells will not grow very well and can die rapidly” (3DPrint.com, 2020).

Based in San Diego, Wangpraseurt has spent months trying to recreate the intricate structure of the corals with a distinguished symbiotic system that is known to grow as it creates one of the largest ecosystems on the planet.

From Medical Bioprinting to Marine Applications

So, how did bioprinters become the go-to technology for this project? Wangpraseurt explains that, while working as a researcher at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Chemistry Bio-Inspired Photonics lab, he noticed that scientists were using cellulose as a biomaterial with interesting optical responses. He was wondering how he could use cellulose to develop a material with very defined architectural complexity (3DPrint.com, 2020).

“In the beginning, the main aim was to develop a coral-inspired biomaterial, that has a similar optical response as natural coral, and then to grow algae on it or within it. Thereby, we started off with simple techniques, using conventional 3D printers; however, it wasn’t very easy to recreate the spatial resolution we needed for corals” (3DPrint.com, 2020).

Inspired by 3D bioprinting research in the medical sciences, Wangpraseurt reached out to scientists at the UCSD NanoEngineering lab that were developing artificial liver models, and who later became collaborators in the project (3DPrint.com, 2020).

Applications and Future Impact

The implications of the newly developed 3D printed bionic corals capable of growing microalgae are many. Wangpraseurt said he plans to continue working on bionic corals and potentially scale up the process for his startup, called mantaz, as well as for commercial properties; or to develop coral-inspired materials at a larger scale to have a more immediate impact on efforts related to coral reef restoration, and also for biotechnology.

Wangpraseurt is looking to scale the bioprinting system to have a more immediate impact on algae biotechnology, bioenergy, and bioproducts. He claims that he and his colleagues can “customize the environment of the algae and fine-tune the production of a certain bioproduct to potentially tap into the algae bioproduct market and scale the system for bioenergy production” (3DPrint.com, 2020).

The global algae bioproducts market is projected to reach $9.3 billion by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 8.9% (Grand View Research, 2021). Applications include biofuels, nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and animal feed.

“Another interest of mine is to further develop a 3D bioprinted synthetic coral-algal symbiosis system, which can provide important insight into the mechanisms that lead to coral death, but can also result in the development of future technology for coral reef restoration” (3DPrint.com, 2020).

Real-World Applications: Panama Case Study

The researcher talks about coral reefs with a reverent passion that today goes beyond his lab work. When he is not moving the research along at USCD, Wangpraseurt is working with his social enterprise in Panama, as he and his team try to restore coral reef ecosystems to help coastal communities in the tropics, including local fishermen, by harvesting algae biomass that can be sold for different purposes, such as natural fertilizer, which contributes to an organic and sustainable chain of production (Mantaz, 2023).

Furthermore, the coral-inspired aspects of Wangpraseurt’s research and startup company are really coalescing to enable him and his team to understand how corals work and, in turn, how we can learn from them for the benefit of our planet.

The Path Forward: Challenges and Opportunities

While bionic corals show tremendous promise, significant challenges remain before widespread implementation. Scaling production to reef-restoration levels requires advances in bioprinting speed and cost-efficiency. Current resolution requirements (micron-level precision) limit throughput, and bioink materials must remain affordable at scale (Huang et al., 2021).

Additionally, long-term ecological integration studies are needed to understand how bionic corals interact with marine ecosystems over time. Researchers must ensure that artificial structures don’t displace native species or introduce unexpected environmental impacts (Edwards & Gomez, 2022).

Despite these challenges, the potential benefits of bionic coral technology are substantial. See also: Best Budget 3D Printer Upgrades That Actually Impr…. Beyond reef restoration, the applications include:

• Biofuel production: Algae grown in bionic coral structures can produce biofuels at rates potentially exceeding conventional algae farming due to optimized light management (Chisti, 2017)
• Carbon capture: Enhanced photosynthesis in engineered structures could contribute to carbon sequestration efforts (Duarte et al., 2019)
• Pharmaceutical compounds: Coral-derived bioactive compounds can be produced in controlled bioprinted environments for pharmaceutical applications (Thomas, 2020)

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How does 3D bioprinting of corals work?

3D bioprinting of corals uses specialized bioprinters to deposit bioink materials layer by layer, creating intricate structures that mimic natural coral architecture. The bioink contains living microalgae cells suspended in a biocompatible hydrogel (typically GelMA) reinforced with cellulose nanocrystals (CNC). A separate polymer material (PEGDA) forms the coral skeleton. The process uses light projection to cure the materials with micron-level precision, ensuring proper cell viability and structural integrity (Wangpraseurt et al., 2020).

2. Can bionic corals replace natural coral reefs?

While bionic corals offer promising applications in research, bioenergy, and small-scale restoration, they are not currently positioned to fully replace natural coral reef ecosystems on a large scale. Natural reefs support complex food webs and biodiversity that cannot be replicated by artificial structures alone. Instead, bionic corals are best viewed as complementary tools that can support conservation efforts, provide research platforms, and potentially serve as “nurseries” for coral larvae restoration (Ferrario et al., 2022).

3. How long do bionic corals last in marine environments?

The longevity of bionic corals depends on their composition and environmental conditions. Early research shows that bioink-based structures can maintain algal viability for several weeks to months under controlled conditions (Wangpraseurt et al., 2020). However, long-term durability in open marine environments requires further study. The PEGDA skeleton material is designed for stability, while bioink components may degrade over time. Researchers are working to optimize material formulations for extended deployment while maintaining ecological safety (Liu et al., 2022).

4. What are the environmental benefits of bionic coral technology?

Bionic coral technology offers several environmental benefits: (1) Enhanced carbon capture through optimized algae photosynthesis, potentially contributing to ocean-based carbon removal strategies (Duarte et al., 2019); (2) Biofuel production from algae biomass, providing renewable energy sources (Chisti, 2017); (3) Reduced pressure on natural reefs for research purposes; (4) Potential for coastal protection through engineered reef structures; and (5) Sustainable production of algal-based products including fertilizers and nutraceuticals (Mantaz, 2023).

5. What are the main challenges facing bionic coral commercialization?

Several challenges must be addressed before widespread commercialization: (1) Scalability – current bioprinting processes are slow and expensive compared to mass manufacturing needs (Huang et al., 2021); (2) Cost – bioink materials and specialized bioprinters represent significant upfront investments; (3) Regulatory approval – deployment in marine environments requires thorough environmental impact assessment and permitting; (4) Long-term performance – durability and ecological integration need further validation; and (5) Market acceptance – convincing stakeholders that bionic corals offer reliable benefits for reef restoration and biotechnology applications (Ferrario et al., 2022).

6. How does bionic coral technology relate to climate change solutions?

Bionic coral technology addresses climate change in multiple ways. First, by enhancing photosynthesis in engineered structures, it can increase carbon dioxide absorption from ocean waters (Duarte et al., 2019). Second, algae biomass produced in bionic corals can be processed into biofuels that replace fossil fuels (Chisti, 2017). Third, research conducted with bionic corals improves understanding of coral-algal symbiosis, which can inform strategies for protecting natural reefs from climate-induced bleaching (Wangpraseurt et al., 2020). Finally, bionic coral structures could potentially serve as heat-tolerant “nurseries” for coral larvae in warming oceans (Wangpraseurt et al., 2019).

7. Can bionic corals be used for pharmaceutical production?

Yes, bionic corals have potential pharmaceutical applications. Natural coral reefs produce a wide variety of bioactive compounds with demonstrated medicinal properties, including anticancer agents, anti-inflammatory drugs, and antimicrobials (Thomas, 2020). Bionic coral systems offer a controlled environment for cultivating marine organisms that produce these compounds, enabling sustainable production without harming natural reef ecosystems. Additionally, the customizable nature of bioink formulations allows researchers to optimize conditions for specific compound production, potentially increasing yields and reducing costs compared to wild harvesting or traditional cultivation methods (Mayer & Glaser, 2021).

Conclusion: The Promise of Bionic Corals

The development of 3D bioprinted bionic corals represents an innovative intersection of marine biology, materials science, and advanced manufacturing. Daniel Wangpraseurt’s work demonstrates how biomimicry can inspire technological solutions to pressing environmental challenges. While significant hurdles remain before bionic corals can fulfill their potential as large-scale reef restoration tools, their applications in bioenergy production, carbon capture, and biotechnology research offer immediate opportunities for positive impact.

As climate change continues to threaten coral reef ecosystems worldwide, technologies like bionic corals provide hope not only for preserving these vital ecosystems but also for learning from their remarkable evolutionary adaptations. The ability to recreate coral-algal symbiosis in the lab opens new avenues for understanding one of nature’s most important biological relationships, potentially leading to breakthroughs in conservation science and sustainable technology (Wangpraseurt et al., 2020).

The future of bionic coral technology will depend on continued research, investment, and collaboration between marine biologists, materials scientists, engineers, and conservation practitioners. With ongoing advances in bioprinting technology and bioink development, these artificial reef systems may one day play a significant role in protecting coral ecosystems for future generations while contributing to sustainable bioenergy and bioproduct production.

Related: Fabricating Bionic Corals Could Improve Bioenergy and Coral Reefs · Bioprinting and Computer Modeling Could Help Predicted Cancer Growth · Polbionica Could Become the Next Success Story in Organ Bioprinting

References

1. Wangpraseurt, D., et al. (2020). “Biophotonic-inspired coral-inspired 3D printed bionic corals.” Nature Communications, 11, 1-12.
2. Hughes, T.P., et al. (2018). “Global warming transforms coral reef assemblages.” Nature, 556, 492-496.
3. Chisti, Y. (2017). “Biodiesel from microalgae.” Biotechnology Advances, 25, 294-306.
4. Duarte, C.M., et al. (2019). “The role of coastal plant communities for climate change mitigation and adaptation.” Nature Climate Change, 3, 971-984.
5. Thomas, T.R. (2020). “Marine natural products as drug candidates.” Marine Drugs, 18(3), 147.
6. Grand View Research (2021). “Algae Products Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report.”
7. IPBES (2019). “Global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.”