PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
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
TI  - Biological fabrication of cellulose fibers with tailored properties
AID  - 10.1126/science.aan5830
DP  - 2017 Sep 15
TA  - Science
PG  - 1118--1122
VI  - 357
IP  - 6356
4099  - http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6356/1118.short
4100  - http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6356/1118.full
SO  - Science2017 Sep 15; 357
AB  - Responsive or functional fabrics include coatings or secondary materials with properties such as changing color with temperature or generating electricity with movement. The challenge is that anything added to a fabric can get washed or worn away. Hence, Natalio et al. opted to build the functionality directly into cotton grown in vitro, through the addition of glucose modified at the C2 position to the culture medium. By this process, fibers can be made that naturally fluoresce or have magnetic properties, for instance.Science, this issue p. 1118Cotton 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.