TY - JOUR

T1 - Biological fabrication of cellulose fibers with tailored properties

AU - Natalio, Filipe

AU - Fuchs, Regina

AU - Cohen, Sidney R.

AU - Leitus, Gregory

AU - Fritz-Popovski, Gerhard

AU - Paris, Oskar

AU - Kappl, Michael

AU - Butt, Hans-Jürgen

PY - 2017/9/15

Y1 - 2017/9/15

N2 - Cotton is a promising basis for wearable smart textiles. Current approaches that rely on fiber coatings suffer from function loss during wear. We present an approach that allows biological incorporation of exogenous molecules into cotton fibers to tailor the material’s functionality. In vitro model cultures of upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) are incubated with 6-carboxyfluorescein–glucose and dysprosium–1,4,7,10-tetraazacyclododecane-1,4,7,10-tetraacetic acid–glucose, where the glucose moiety acts as a carrier capable of traveling from the vascular connection to the outermost cell layer of the ovule epidermis, becoming incorporated into the cellulose fibers. This yields fibers with unnatural properties such as fluorescence or magnetism. Combining biological systems with the appropriate molecular design offers numerous possibilities to grow functional composite materials and implements a material-farming concept.

AB - Cotton is a promising basis for wearable smart textiles. Current approaches that rely on fiber coatings suffer from function loss during wear. We present an approach that allows biological incorporation of exogenous molecules into cotton fibers to tailor the material’s functionality. In vitro model cultures of upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) are incubated with 6-carboxyfluorescein–glucose and dysprosium–1,4,7,10-tetraazacyclododecane-1,4,7,10-tetraacetic acid–glucose, where the glucose moiety acts as a carrier capable of traveling from the vascular connection to the outermost cell layer of the ovule epidermis, becoming incorporated into the cellulose fibers. This yields fibers with unnatural properties such as fluorescence or magnetism. Combining biological systems with the appropriate molecular design offers numerous possibilities to grow functional composite materials and implements a material-farming concept.

U2 - 10.1126/science.aan5830

DO - 10.1126/science.aan5830

M3 - Article

VL - 357.2017

SP - 1118

EP - 1122

JO - Science

JF - Science

SN - 0036-8075

IS - 6356

ER -