Engineered Living Materials: Engineered Living Materials: Prospects and Challenges for Using Biological Systems to Direct the Assembly of Smart Materials (Adv. Mater. 19/2018)

The world in a biofilm: in article number 1704847, Neel S. Joshi and co-workers present a detailed review of the rapidly emerging field of engineered living materials (ELMs), in which living cells assimilate resources from their surroundings to create materials with programmed functions. The inside back cover shows an Escherichia coli biofilm growing on the surface of a polystyrene bead, by scanning electron microscopy. Image credit: Seth Kroll and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.