Bacteria is the new black: Scientists create microbes that make self-dyeing textiles

For sustainability-minded fashionistas, materials made by fast-growing, eco-friendly bacteria offer an appealing alternative to leather or faux plastic replacements such as “pleather.” Yet coloring or adding patterns to these bacterial textiles can still mean working with environmentally harmful dyes. A study published last week in Nature Biotechnology may offer a solution: genetically engineering bacteria to produce melanin pigment so the material can dye itself . “This is an example of how biology can provide products that not only have remarkable properties, but can also be manufactured with a very low footprint and be sustainable,” says Sara Molinari, a synthetic biologist at the University of Maryland who was not involved in the study. Bacteria-generated textiles are “a completely new approach in material manufacturing.” The leather substitute is made of cellulose, an essential structural material in plants that is also produced by several species of bacteria. In recent years, researchers and designers have started to produce textiles from bacterial cellulose as an alternative to leather and pleather, some of which are already on the market. The durable textile, which scientists can quickly grow into custom shapes, has many of the same properties as traditional leather. But although bacterial cellulose textiles have fewer environmental impacts than leather or plastic, they are naturally beige. That means...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news