2023 IRG-2: Sugar-fueled Dissipative Living Materials

This paper reports:

• The first example of synthetic living material featuring dissipative behaviors directly controlled by the fuel consumption of their constituent cells
• A synthetic dissipative system that interfaces biology and shows repeated macroscopic phase transition
• Detailed examination of kinetics of fuel consumption by living cells at a molecular level

Impact:

• This work significantly expands the scope of dissipative materials by bringing it one step closer to integration with biology.
• This work provides a new tool and knowledge to design synthetic dissipative systems with living cells.

Hyuna Jo, Serxho Selmani, Zhibin Guan, Seunghyun Sim
(University of California, Irvine)

Jo H, Selmani S, Guan ZSim S, “Sugar-Fueled Dissipative Living Materials” Journal of the American Chemical Society145, 1811-1817 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.2c11122