Biofilms à la mode

The production of textiles is an important industry and even an important handcraft for several countries, whose despite its large scale of production has not implemented very innovative methods that can be considered different enough from ancient methods. However, Australian researchers have taken the usage of slimy biofilms to a next level–through art and science collaborative research–for developing fermented fabrics, which are biodegradable and form into any shape.

Micro’be’ is the name of the project investigating the practical and cultural biosynthesis of clothing, in which instead of inanimate and polluting machines producing textiles, living microbes will do the job cleanly out of red wine, beer or any other alcoholic beverage from which the bacteria will do their job forming layers of slimy cellulose over a dummy doll.

This challenge certainly ruptures not only the traditional way of producing fabrics, but also the meaning of traditional interactions with body and clothing (as the developers of this project very accurately say in their website). Biofilm fermented fabrics could push the $229.5 billion per annum Australian fabric manufacturing industry to new limits; however, biofilms in “fasion” applications are also invading other fields, in which Australian researchers are also involved.

Prototypes of futuristic furniture with glowing biofilms have been produced using non-pathogenic bioluminescent bacteria (Vibrio harveyi and Vibrio fischeri) undergoing “quorum sensing”, which is a communication mechanism that cells in biofilms use for monitoring and mediating the size of their population when it achieves critical concentrations.

It’s not anymore all about trying to kill bacteria, trying to develop new antibiotics all the time for getting rid of them, or achieving only scientific products covering our primary necessities, but about taking biofilms and microbial presence in humans lives to levels formerly unimaginable.

~ by koxinelle on April 19, 2007.