Imagine that you could actually grow the future. By bringing together design and technology, we can, in effect, edit biology-and create physical objects that point to the shape of things to come. That, in a sense, is what my team do in our lab. Today we can design micro-organisms to mimic "factories" capable of transforming almost any biomass into bio-products that may be useful for, say, wearable garments, transport and even construction. Engineered gut E.coli can generate useful chemicals and antibiotics; blue-green algae can convert captured carbon into biofuels or plastics. This biological alchemy is inspiring a movement towards the design of living matter not for, but as, the built environment I call this Material Ecology.
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