Advanced Science published the first experimental paper tackling deep fundamental aspects of bacterial behavior in engineered living materials by INM authors Shardul Bhusari, Shrikrishnan Sankaran, and Aránzazu del Campo.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202106026
Understanding bacterial behavior in confinement is of great interest for designing engineered living materials or studying biofilms. In this work, a unique hydrogel platform, whose viscoelastic properties can be tuned by varying the extent of stabilizing crosslinks, is developed to demonstrate that the growth and metabolism of encapsulated bacteria can be regulated by mechanical restrictions imparted by the matrix.