In a recent study the U. of Tokyo team placed small, pre scored plastic films onto sheets of cultured rat heart muscle cells. They were then able to gently nudge them to assemble 3d structures in a process they call “micro-origami”.
Researchers believe that this type of assembly could one day be used to create bio-compatible devices, like stents, that could be created inside a patient’s body, or to engineer blood vessels and other complex biological structures.