🤖 AI Summary
中国の研究者たちは、自己再生と修復機能を持つ生活細菌繊維を発展させました。この材料は栄養液と新しい FUNGUS によって表面を刷新し、穴を補修することができます。また、酵母や他の真菌との共培養により、青色色素や UV 抗食性などの追加特性も得られます。
研究チームのリーダー Ke Li 博士によると、このエンジニアード生活材料（ELM）は、最終的な製品化後でも活性化したままの生命体を用いて構築されるもので、低代謝、低活動状態にあるため半生半死の状態です。新しい成長を促すために栄養液（ポテトウォーター）を適用することで、生活細菌が芽生え、新しいフィラメントを伸展させ、材料の表面を再生成します。また、この材料は自然な自清機能を持ち、水滴を弾く特性があります。
Li 博士は、「視覚的表現と限定的な製品寿命が必要な用途では、その独自の表面構造、生物学的着色、制御可能な修復機能、バイオ降解性が特に有用」と述べています。しかしながら、衣服や永久建築物への普及には、耐久性、湿気抵抗性、安全性、生産安定化などのさらなる改善が必要です。
この技術は建築や衣料品の分野で将来有望であり、製品の寿命と視覚表現に重要な用途を持つ可能性があります。
Researchers in China have developed a living mycelium textile that can self-clean, renew its surface, and partially repair holes when treated with a nutrient solution and fresh fungus. The material can also gain added properties such as blue pigmentation or UV resistance by co-culturing it with yeast or other fungi. Dezeen reports: The breakthrough from the researchers at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology is a type of engineered living material (ELM) -- a material built off living organisms that stay active even after they're fabricated into their final form. [...] By working with living but dormant cordyceps militaris fungus instead, the researchers have been able to take advantage of its biological functions. The result is a material that is self-renewing and responsive to its environment, in ways that could one day transform architecture and clothing -- as seen in a prototype dress created together with material innovation company Peelshere.
It can also be adapted by mixing in other fungi or yeast, lead researcher Ke Li and her team detail in a paper in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances. In it, they describe a "programmable fungal platform" where mycelium is treated like a modular system, with the sheet material forming a base structure and extra biological abilities, such as colour and UV resistance, becoming "plug-and-play" add-ons via other organisms. This gets their textile closer to the self-repair, environmental responsiveness and controllable functionality that is the promise of engineered living materials, they argue.
The ELM's self-renewing and semi-repairing functionality comes from the mycelium base structure. Following drying at 45 degrees, the material is not quite living and not quite dead, but instead in a "low-metabolic, dormant-like state", Li told Dezeen, meaning it is not actively growing. However, new growth can be triggered by applying a nutrient solution of potato water, leading the dormant mycelium to germinate, send out new fungal filaments and renew the material's surface. When this nutrient solution is applied over a hole, along with a small patch of fresh fungus, it triggers the living cells to grow across the gap, seamlessly repairing the surface without any adhesives or stitching. The material is also naturally self-cleaning, as it is hydrophobic. "Its distinctive surface texture, biological colouring, controlled repair and biodegradability may be particularly useful in applications where visual expression and a defined product lifetime are important," said Li.
"Further improvements in durability, moisture resistance, safety and manufacturing consistency would be needed before it could be considered for routine clothing or permanent architectural use."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
ログイン
