Army Research Develops Living Material that Interacts with its Environment – The Debrief

Backed by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Imperial College London have developed a durable, living material capable of detecting and protecting itself from threats and interacting with its environment.

According to Army Research Labs, the unusual source of inspiration behind this breakthrough living material was a mixture of bacteria and yeast similar to what is used to make a trendy fermented beverage called Kombucha tea. Combining a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast, also called SCOBY, engineers created cellulose embedded enzymes that could sense its surroundings and function like a living material.

This is important to the Army as this can lead to new materials with potential applications in microbial fuel cells, sense and respond systems, and self-reporting and self-repairing materials, Army Research Office program manager Dr. Dawanne Poree said in a statement.

via thedebrief.org