Bioengineering and biotechnology

“Living materials based on bacteria and grown in a Boston lab could point to a greener way of manufacturing,” writes BBC News reporter Roland Pease of new MIT work to develop living materials.

“Now researchers at MIT have devised a way to combine a living E. coli cell with inanimate building blocks, like gold nanoparticles and quantum dots, to create a hybrid ‘living material,’” writes Dexter Johnson in IEEE Spectrum.

Nadia Drake writes in Wired about MIT researchers developing living materials. “By tricking E.coli into incorporating gold nanoparticles or quantum dots into their proteins, the team has crafted biofilms with a range of crazy capabilities,” Drake reports.

Los Angeles Times reporter Amina Khan reports on how MIT researchers are creating living materials by incorporating inorganic matter into bacterial cells. The living material could be used to make batteries, solar cells or even biomedical devices.

Writing for USA Today, Karen Weintraub reports on Professor Michael Strano’s work to give plants the ability to serve as sensors, antennae and power plants thanks to carbon nanotubes embedded inside the plant.

“Researchers at MIT are giving plants super powers by placing tiny carbon nanotubes deep within their cells,” writes Deborah Netburn in a Los Angeles Times piece on bionic plants developed by MIT researchers.

Alan Neuhasuser reporting for U.S. News & World Report examines how MIT researchers have embedded carbon nanotubes in plants, helping them collect more sunlight. The bionic plants could be used to detect explosives, chemical weapons and more, Neuhasuser reports.

“A team of biologists and engineers want to turn plants into chemical warfare detectors that can sniff out sarin gas or explosives. For now, though, they've succeeded in turning the flowering Arabidopsis thaliana into a pollutant detector using carbon nanotubes,” writes Wired reporter Liat Clark of the new bionic plants developed at MIT.

New Scientist’s Catherine Brahic reports on new bionic plants developed at MIT. The plants, which have an increased ability to photosynthesise thanks to nanomaterials embedded in their cells, could be used to create self-powering and self-repairing materials, new types of fuel cells and more, Brahic reports.

Writing for Scientific American, David Biello reports on a team of MIT researchers who are giving plants and the photosynthesis process an extra boost thanks to carbon nanotubes the team embedded deep within the plant’s leaves.