Synthetic Biology: Living Buildings May Help Fight Global Warming

One solution to reducing the environmental footprint of buildings is to create 'living' materials using synthetic biology and cover them with it.  Those materials could eventually produce water in desert environments or harvest sunlight to produce biofuels. Researchers from the University of Greenwich, the University of Southern Denmark, University of Glasgow and University College London are working with an architectural firm and a building materials manufacturer to use protocells - bubbles of oil in an aqueous fluid sensitive to light or different chemicals – to fix carbon from the atmosphere or to create a coral-like skin, which could protect buildings. read more

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