EAGER: Living Yarns from Phototactic Self-Assembly in Cyanobacteria Colonies

About This Grant

NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY What if your clothes could grow, heal, and respond to light, not just metaphorically, but biologically? This project explores a radical new idea: living textile materials made from photosynthetic microorganisms. Unlike synthetic fabrics or even bioengineered materials that mimic life, these textiles would be truly alive, growing in yarns and woven structures and capable of adapting to their environment. The key lies in cyanobacteria: ancient, harmless, light-sensitive microbes that naturally form long, thread-like chains held together by large, secreted sugar molecules. These chains can self-organize into yarns, especially when guided by light and confined in narrow spaces. The goal of this NSF-funded research is to understand how these bacteria move, stick together, and respond to light to create “yarn colonies”: living fibers that can be shaped and tuned by light, harnessing the unique biological functions of cyanobacteria. The team will study how different light patterns and physical environments affect the way the bacteria grow and align, how their sugar secretions help them stick together, and how strong the resulting fibers are, including whether they can stretch, heal, or change stiffness in response to light. This work directly supports the national interest by advancing the development of yarns that are alive and responsive, which could change how we make clothes and building materials. These living fibers grow and organize themselves using light, offering a completely new way to build textiles, not by traditional spinning, weaving and stitching, but by guiding living systems to grow into useful shapes and structures. This approach could lead to new manufacturing methods that are more flexible, efficient, and capable of producing fibers with built-in functions like self-repair or shape change. Today, most textile production happens overseas using traditional industrial processes. But this project opens the door to a new kind of U.S.-based textile manufacturing, one that uses biology as a tool for making advanced fibers. By developing the science behind these living yarns, the project lays the foundation for future industries that combine biology, materials, and textile science. It also includes public exhibits and art installations that help people imagine how living materials could become part of everyday life and inspire the next generation of scientists and makers. TECHNICAL SUMMARY This NSF project aims to pioneer the development of living yarns: photosynthetically active, structurally dynamic fibers formed from filamentous cyanobacteria. The research investigates how phototactic motility, mechanical confinement, and extracellular polymeric substance (EPS) production interact to drive self-organization into yarn-like structures with tunable mechanical properties. The central hypothesis is that the interplay of these factors governs filament alignment, cohesion, and responsiveness to light conditions. The project is structured around three aims: (i) Investigate how light regimes and confined geometries (e.g., capillaries, tubes) influence long-range filament alignment and yarn formation. (ii) Characterize the molecular structure and viscoelastic properties of capsular (CPS) and released (RPS) polysaccharides to understand their role in filament cohesion and assembly kinetics. (iii) Quantify tensile strength, crack bridging, and self-healing under light cues to define the adaptive mechanics of living yarns. The approach leverages a curated library of wild cyanobacterial strains with diverse morphologies and EPS profiles to identify predictive traits for integration into programmable, photosynthetically powered fibers. Scientific outcomes include phenomenological models of light-guided self-assembly, structure–viscoelasticity relationships for EPS, and quantitative frameworks for motility–viscosity coupling. This work promotes the progress of science by establishing foundational principles for a new class of bioenabled, stimuli-responsive materials. It advances national prosperity by facilitating the development of novel fiber technologies that could be manufactured domestically, reducing reliance on foreign textile production and creating opportunities for U.S.-based innovation in advanced materials manufacturing. By laying the groundwork for biologically driven fabrication methods, this project supports the emergence of a new industrial sector at the intersection of biology, materials science, and textile engineering. The project also contributes to broader society through public engagement and education, inspiring future scientists and informing the public about the potential of living systems in material and textile design. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.