Enhancing Meat Analog Texture Using Wet-Spun Fibroin Protein Fibers: A Novel Approach to Mimic Whole-Muscle Meat.

The increasing demand for protein-rich, plant-based foods has driven the development of meat analogs that closely mimic the texture and mouthfeel of animal meat. While plant-based fibrils and electrospun silk fibroin fibers have been explored for texture enhancement and scaffolding in both meat analogs and cell-based meats, the use of wet-spun fibroin protein fibers as a food ingredient remains underexplored. This study investigates the potential of wet-spun recombinant fibroin fibers to enhance the textural properties of meat analogs.

Large-Scale Patterning of Reactive Surfaces for Wearable and Environmentally Deployable Sensors.

Wearable interfaces are central to multiple healthcare and wellness strategies encompassing diet and nutrition, personalized health monitoring, and performance optimization. Specifically, the advent of flexible electronic formats coupled with microfluidic interfaces has resulted in sophisticated conformal devices for biofluid sampling and quantification. Here, a complementary approach is presented to wearable sensing by using a large-scale, conformal, distributed format that relies on the use of biomaterial-based inks to print and stabilize deterministic patterns of biochemical reporters with high resolution.

Flexible magnetic composites for light-controlled actuation and interfaces.

The interaction between light and matter has been long explored, leading to insights based on the modulation and control of electrons and/or photons within a material. An opportunity exists in optomechanics, where the conversion of radiation into material strain and actuation is currently induced at the molecular level in liquid crystal systems, or at the microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) device scale, producing limited potential strain energy (or force) in light-driven systems. We present here flexible material composites that, when illuminated, are capable of macroscale motion, through the interplay of optically absorptive elements and low Curie temperature magnetic materials.