Engineered Living Materials

The emerging field of Engineered Living Materials represents a significant paradigm shift in materials design and synthesis, in which living cells are used to impart biologically active functionalities to manmade materials. The result is a genetically programmable augmentation of non-living matter to exhibit unprecedented life-like (i.e., living) capabilities. At the intersection of synthetic biology and materials science, the field of Engineered Living Materials exhibits unprecedented promise and potential to alter the way we synthesize new materials and design medical devices, fabrics, robotics, commodity polymers, and construction materials. Materials with attributes of living systems can be engineered with an ability to respond to their environment and designed to self-repair in response to physical or other stresses or detect the presence of specific stimuli, such as light, heat, pressure, or hazardous chemical compounds.