Novel Methods for Biofabrication and Stimulation of Engineered Living Materials

Abstract

Engineered living materials (ELMs) that contain photosynthetic microorganisms are promising low-energy platforms for biological carbon capture. Here, we report the fabrication and 33-day evaluation of fibrous alginate hydrogels embedding Chlorella vulgaris. Each construct contained 0.5 g dry algal biomass in an approximately 40 g hydrated material matrix and provided an effective surface area of about 0.5 m². Under sealed semi-passive chamber conditions, the materials repeatedly depleted injected CO₂ during light periods and maintained visible photosynthetic activity for more than 30 days. The integrated chamber-equivalent CO₂ removal was 89 000 ppm, corresponding to 160.1 g CO₂ under the experimental conversion used, and destructive sampling indicated a final biomass gain of 0.07–0.10 g, or 14–20% relative to the initial dry biomass. The results support the use of fibrous alginate architectures for long-lived algal ELMs and motivate future femtosecond-laser experiments aimed at optically modulating carbonic anhydrase-mediated CO₂ hydration and fixation.