A new type of bioplastic could help reduce the plastic industry's environmental footprint. Researchers have developed a biodegradable form of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) filled with bacterial ...

Gürol Süel points to an oval image on a large screen. It’s a video of a spore that periodically changes color. “It’s counting every time it encounters food. It’s summing those signals and it gets ...

Bacterial spores – the hardy survival structures formed by certain bacterial species – are proving to be a game changer in the field of engineered living materials (ELMs). These autonomously grown ...

When the going gets tough for certain bacteria, they form into spores that can withstand the harshest of environments. Scientists have now utilized that fact to produce "living plastic" that ...

Bacteria go to extremes to handle hard times: They hunker down, building a fortress-like shell around their DNA and turning off all signs of life. And yet, when times improve, these dormant spores can ...

Researchers have found that multidrug-resistant bacteria and bacterial spores can be killed by ultrashort-pulse lasers. The findings could lead to new ways to sterilize wounds and blood products ...

Scientists have demonstrated a creative solution to plastic pollution, one of our most pressing environmental problems. Plastic was embedded with spores of plastic-eating bacteria that are activated ...

Strips of plain TPU (top) and "living" TPU (bottom) at different stages of decomposition over five months of being in compost. A new type of bioplastic could help reduce the plastic industry’s ...