First-of-its-kind hydrogel platform enables on-demand production of medicines, chemicals

Science Daily  February 9, 2020
A team of researchers in the US (University of Washington, UT Austin) has developed a hydrogel system, portable “biofactory”, for harnessing the bioactivity of embedded microbes for on-demand small molecule and peptide production in microbial mono-culture and consortia. This platform bypasses the challenges of engineering a multi-organism consortia by utilizing a temperature-responsive, shear-thinning hydrogel to compartmentalize organisms into polymeric hydrogels that control the final consortium composition and dynamics without the need for synthetic control of mutualism. They have demonstrated that these hydrogels provide protection from preservation techniques (including lyophilization) and can sustain metabolic function for over 1 year of repeated use…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE

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