A severed mosquito proboscis can be turned into an extremely fine nozzle for 3D printing, and this could help create replacement tissues and organs for transplants.

Changhong Cao at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and his colleagues developed the technique, which they call 3D necroprinting, because they were unable to find nozzles thin enough for their work on manufacturing very fine structures. The narrowest commercially available nozzle they could find had an interior bore of 35 micrometres and also came with a hefty £60 ($80) price tag.