Imagine going to a surgeon to have a diseased or injured organ switched out for a fully functional, laboratory-grown replacement. This remains science fiction and not reality because researchers today ...

Seeing plastic trash while hiking inspired a Rutgers chemist to rethink why synthetic plastics last forever while natural ...

Here’s What You Need to Remember: “The ability to harness and adapt cellular machinery to produce non-biological polymers would, in essence, bring synthetic materials into the realm of biological ...

Nanoparticles and polymer nanocomposites have rapidly emerged as transformative materials in the field of biomedicine. By integrating the unique optical, chemical, and physical properties of nanoscale ...

Materials scientists are cooking up environmentally friendly polymers from natural sources like silk, plant fibers and whole algae. Economics and acceptance remain hurdles. By Boyce Upholt / Knowable ...

Here’s What You Need to Remember: There could be many additional applications for the process to include soldier-protective materials, fuel cells that generate power and various kinds of new ...

Synthetic biologists at Northwestern Engineering have developed a set of design rules that guide how ribosomes can incorporate new kinds of monomers — a step forward in using these cellular machines ...

An injectable polymer therapy that takes advantage of the excess of cysteines on tumor cells can stimulate an immune response to fight many different types of cancers in mice (ACS Cent. Sci. 2022, DOI ...

Within tissues, cells are embedded in complex, three-dimensional structures known as the extracellular matrix. Their biomechanical interactions play a crucial role in numerous biological processes.

It was hailed as a wonderful thing: During the oil boom in the 1950s, chemists began to render the waste coming out of refineries into plastic — plastic packaging, plastic furniture, plastic fibers ...