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Engineers design 'living materials'
An artist's depiction of a bacterial cell engineered to produce amyloid nanofibers that incorporate particles such as quantum dots (seen here as red and green spheres) or gold nanoparticles.
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Inspired by natural materials like bone -- a matrix of minerals and other substances, including living cells -- engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have coaxed bacterial cells to produce biofilms that can incorporate nonliving materials, such as gold nanoparticles and quantum dots.
These "living materials" combine the advantages of live cells, which respond to their environment; produce complex biological molecules; and span multiple length scales, with the benefits of nonliving materials, which add functions such as conducting electricity or emitting light.
Timothy Lu, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and biological engineering and the senior author of a paper describing the living functional materials, says the new materials represent a simple demonstration of the power of this approach, which could one day be used to design more complex devices such as solar cells, self-healing materials or diagnostic sensors.
The research was supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
To learn more about this research, see the MIT news story Engineers design 'living materials'. (Date image taken: unknown; date originally posted to NSF Multimedia Gallery: Nov. 09, 2015)
Credit: Yan Liang (L2Molecule.com)
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