Abstract
In recent years, multiple types of substrates have been applied for regulating cell orientation. Among them, surface topography patterns with grooves or ridges have been widely utilizing for cell culturing. However, this construction is still complicated, low cost-effective and exhibits some technological limitations with either “top-down” or “bottom-up” approaches. Here, a simple and green method was developed by utilizing butterfly wings (Morpho menelaus, Papilio ulysses telegonus and Ornithoptera croesus lydius) with natural anisotropic nanostructures to generate cell alignment. A two-step chemical treatment was proposed to achieve more hydrophilic butterfly wings preceding cell culturing. Furthermore, calcein acetoxymethyl ester (Calcein-AM) staining and Methylthiazolyldiphenyl-tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay results demonstrated the appropriate viability of NIH-3T3 fibroblast cells on those butterfly wings. Moreover, the cells displayed a high degree of alignment in each specimen of these wings. We anticipate that those originating from natural butterfly wings will pose important applications for tissue engineering.
Highlights
Cell alignment plays a critical role during embryonic development, proliferation, differentiation, wound healing, and even pathological processes [1–5]
To alter the main wing compound chitin to chitosan, the wings were soaked in 1 M Hydrochloric acid (HCl) for 2 h at room temperature to remove any unwanted contaminations which came from the butterfly living environment
The blue region is represented by the blue area of the wing, while the fiber region consists of the black area of the wing
Summary
Cell alignment plays a critical role during embryonic development, proliferation, differentiation, wound healing, and even pathological processes [1–5]. The capability to generate cell alignment is of significant importance for numerous biological researches [6–11]. Multiple types of substrates have been applied for regulating cell orientation [12–18]. The surface topography pattern with grooves or ridges has been widely employed by top-down approaches, such as photolithography, inkjet printing, and etching [19–25]. The high cost, low time efficiency, and some technological limitations of these approaches have restricted their application [26–31]. Bottom-up approaches, which have the advantage of low costs, versatility, and not being restricted by nanoscale dimensions, have gained increasing attention [32–35].
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