My Water Filter is ALIVE?

Mat Davis 

Collaborating researchers from MIT and Imperial College London have found a new use for kombucha tea. This sounds strange, but according to the team of Timothy Lu, Tom Ellis, Tzu-Chieh Tang, and Charlie Gilbert, they have found a way to make a "living material". In an experiment they made what is referred to as a SCOBY, a Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast. Using kombucha mother used to ferment tea, yeast, and sugar, the engineers have made a material that can sense changes or pollution around it. The group said that the material has many applications,  can be used in protecting packages with its ability to sense if the package is damaged, or in another case to sense and purify water pollution when placed into a water source. What makes this possible is the enzymes within the SCOBY allow it to have varying functions, and the material used to create the SCOBY makes it a tough bit of substance.

An interesting fact is when asked how easy it is to make, Tang replies with "Pretty much everyone can do this in their kitchen or at home." All you need is tea for nutrients, sugar, and a piece of syn-SCOBY mother. A syn-SCOBY mother is the basis of all of this, as it is the formal name of SCOBY, and just a piece of it allows it to grow exponentially. Making its formal name now, "synthetic-symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast", they will continue to do more research and try to make it even more effective. As a final side note, Syn-SCOBY is a good candidate to replace the E. Coli system in creating materials, as the bacteria in a culture can produce enough cellulose material to fill a bathtub in just a few days.

Source

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Inspired by kombucha tea, engineers create 'living materials'." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 11 January 2021. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/01/210111112133.htm>.

SCOPY IMAGE

• 2007-10-10 16:50 Mgarten 784×1161× (335082 bytes) Mature Kombucha