Divya Srinivasan
HTGAA 2025
What if our clothes could clean themselves, or furniture could detect sweat and turn on the HVAC system—powered by living bacteria? This project explores how living organisms like E. coli and Bacillus subtilis can be used to create "living interiors" such as fabrics and surfaces that sense, respond, and evolve. Using robotic lab tools like the Opentrons liquid handler, we will print specific bacterial patterns on fabric to understand how microbes behave when applied as a design material on fabrics. This includes testing how small or detailed these patterns can be with minimum feature sizes, and improving their visual clarity and texture. The goal is to understand patterning with bacteria as a “Living Material Design Langauge.”
Ultimately, I aim to reimagine how to activate textiles and surfaces to increase their functionality—opening up possibilities for eco-friendlier interactive living displays, responsive clothing and furniture, and redesigned interior systems. This work builds on speculative design ideas like IKEA’s future catalogs [1] and bioengineering like Teresa Van Dongen’s microbial-powered lights. [2] Scaling these bioengineered materials, as well as sustaining cells and DNA, are still challenges that exist.
Aim 1: The first aim of my project is to
Aim 2: Switch GFP to chromoproteins for visible light range, transformation with bacillus subtilis that can enter a dormant state and be activated through moisture, cell-free systems, or imagining the systems where the bacteria and cells can be “fed” to be kept alive.
Aim 3: Bacteria powered interactive displays! Smart textiles that can self-sterilize after being touched! Cooling systems that are triggered by human sweat!
The integration of synthetic biology into material design has opened new possibilities for interactive, low-energy systems powered by living organisms. Geobacter sulfurreducens has been engineered to produce protein nanowires capable of electricity generation, forming the basis for self-powered electronic textiles and surfaces [3, 4, 5]. These nanowires remain conductive even under fabrication conditions used in electronics and are stable in bodily fluids, making them promising candidates for wearable technologies. Teresa van Dongen’s Spark of Life [2] project extended this concept into artistic and functional design, creating lighting that is biologically powered and requires microbial care. In my past work, I’ve developed algae-based biomaterials that are responsive to environmental conditions such as heat and moisture. [6] However, most living material systems either lack longevity or require laboratory containment. This project addresses the gap in applying bacterial systems to everyday environments—especially in interior spaces and wearables—by developing design frameworks for patterning and activating microbes through cell-free systems or spore-based dormancy. This will be done by using a cumate-inducible system for ease of imaging and opentrons handling. [7]
This project introduces a novel intersection of synthetic biology, interior architecture, and textile design, fields rarely combined. While bacterial systems have been used in medical or energy contexts, their application in interactive surfaces and wearables remains underexplored. By using tools like Opentrons for precise microbial patterning and testing alternative expression systems such as cumate-inducible promoters or cell-free methods, this work proposes a design-first methodology for creating sustainable, biologically integrated spaces. Furthermore, this project challenges the notion that technology must always be sterile or autonomous. Instead, it proposes symbiotic design, where humans interact with and help maintain the health of microbial systems, like watering a houseplant. This concept fundamentally reimagines how living technologies can be part of our daily lives, not hidden, but nurtured and celebrated.