New materials inspired by kombucha mother

This mixture, also known as SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast), was used by the researchers to produce cellulose embedded with enzymes that can perform functions such as sensing environmental pollutants. They also showed that they could incorporate yeast directly into the material, creating "living materials" that could be used to purify water or to make "smart" packaging materials that can detect damage by using fluorescence.

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"We foresee a future where diverse materials could be grown at home or in local production facilities, using biology rather than resource-intensive centralised manufacturing," said Timothy Lu, an MIT associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science and of biological engineering.

Lu and Tom Ellis, a professor of bioengineering at Imperial College London, are the senior authors of a paper detailing their work in Nature Materials. The paper's lead authors are MIT graduate student Tzu-Chieh Tang and Cambridge University postdoc Charlie Gilbert.