Living wearables: Bacterial reactive glove

Bioelectrical synchronization of Picea abies during a solar eclipse

Regular light-dark cycles greatly affect organisms, and events like eclipses induce distinctive physiological and behavioural shifts. While well documented in animals, plant behaviour during eclipses remains largely unexplored. Here, we monitored multiple spruce trees to assess their individual and collective bioelectrical responses to a solar eclipse. Trees anticipated the eclipse, synchronizing their bioelectrical behaviour hours in advance. Older trees displayed greater anticipatory behaviour with early time-asymmetry and entropy increases. These results reveal a relationship between trees, shaped by individual age and physiology as well as collective history. This highlights the significance of synchrony in plants, offering new insights into coordinated behaviours in nature.

Functionalizing the Electrical Properties of Kombucha Zoogleal Mats for Biosensing Applications

Kombucha is a type of tea that is fermented using yeast and bacteria. During this process, a film made of cellulose is produced. This film has unique properties such as biodegradability, flexibility, shape conformability, and ability to self-grow as well as be produced across customized scales. In our previous studies, we demonstrated that Kombucha mats exhibit electrical activity represented by spikes of the electrical potential. We propose using microbial fermentation as a method for in situ functionalization to modulate the electroactive nature of Kombucha cellulose mats, where graphene and zeolite were used for the functionalization. We subjected the pure and functionalized Kombucha mats to mechanical stimulation by applying different weights and geometries. Our experiments demonstrated that Kombucha mats functionalized with graphene and zeolite exhibit memfractive properties and respond to load by producing distinctive spiking patterns. Our findings present incredible opportunities for the in situ development of functionalized hybrid materials with sensing, computing, and memory capabilities. These materials can self-assemble and self-grow after they fuse their living and synthetic components. This study contributes to an emergent area of research on bioelectronic sensing and hybrid living materials, opening up exciting opportunities for use in smart wearables, diagnostics, health monitoring, and energy harvesting applications.

Hormonal computing: a conceptual approach

This paper provides a conceptual roadmap for the use of hormonal bioinspired models in a broad range of AI, neuroengineering, or computational systems. The functional signaling nature of hormones provides an example of a reliable multidimensional information management system that can solve parallel multitasks. Two existing examples of hormonal computing bioinspired possibilities are shortly reviewed, and two novel approaches are introduced, with a special emphasis on what researchers propose as hormonal computing for neurorehabilitation in patients with complete spinal cord injuries. They extend the use of epidural electrical stimulation (EES) by applying sequential stimulations to limbs through prostheses. The prostheses include various limb models and are connected to a neurostimulation bus called the central pattern generator (CPG). The CPG bus utilizes hormonal computing principles to coordinate the stimulation of the spinal cord and muscles.

Kombucha electronics: electronic circuits on kombucha mats

A kombucha is a tea and sugar fermented by over sixty kinds of yeasts and bacteria. This symbiotic community produces kombucha mats, which are cellulose-based hydrogels. The kombucha mats can be used as an alternative to animal leather in industry and fashion once they have been dried and cured. Prior to this study, we demonstrated that living kombucha mats display dynamic electrical activity and distinct stimulating responses. For use in organic textiles, cured mats of kombucha are inert. To make kombucha wearables functional, it is necessary to incorporate electrical circuits. We demonstrate that creating electrical conductors on kombucha mats is possible. After repeated bending and stretching, the circuits maintain their functionality. In addition, the abilities and electronic properties of the proposed kombucha, such as being lighter, less expensive, and more flexible than conventional electronic systems, pave the way for their use in a diverse range of applications.

Living Plants Ecosystem Sensing: A Quantum Bridge between Thermodynamics and Bioelectricity

The in situ measurement of the bioelectric potential in xilematic and floematic superior plants reveals valuable insights into the biological activity of these organisms, including their responses to lunar and solar cycles and collective behaviour. This paper reports on the “Cyberforest Experiment” conducted in the open-air Paneveggio forest in Valle di Fiemme, Trento, Italy, where spruce (i.e., Picea abies) is cultivated. Our analysis of the bioelectric potentials reveals a strong correlation between higher-order complexity measurements and thermodynamic entropy and suggests that bioelectrical signals can reflect the metabolic activity of plants. Additionally, temporal correlations of bioelectric signals from different trees may be precisely synchronized or may lag behind. These correlations are further explored through the lens of quantum field theory, suggesting that the forest can be viewed as a collective array of in-phase elements whose correlation is naturally tuned depending on the environmental conditions. These results provide compelling evidence for the potential of living plant ecosystems as environmental sensors.