A parasitic fungus that grows on caterpillars has been transformed into a dress capable of repairing itself when damaged. Using the fungus Cordyceps militaris as a foundation, Ke Li from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, along with colleagues, created a living textile that can be “programmed” with various properties through different microbial components. The results were published in Science Advances.
According to Li, it feels denser and less fibrous than cotton, closer to a soft non-woven fabric or a flexible material similar to leather.
“After washing and treatment, the material doesn’t have a strong fungal odor,” Li says. “Freshly prepared samples might have a faint biological or fermentation-related smell, but it can be significantly reduced through cleaning, drying, and further processing.”
The fungus consists of thin threads known as hyphae. Li and his team first grew the fungus into small spherical granules in a liquid culture, then washed them and placed them into molds, where they formed a sheet.
To prevent the resulting textile from becoming brittle, it was soaked in glycerin, which acts as a “plasticizer,” making the naturally rigid structure of the fungus softer and more flexible.
“We don’t use conventional fabric, polymer mesh, or any other external supporting framework,” Li says. “The mycelium granules of Cordyceps militaris themselves serve as structural building blocks, and their intertwined hyphae create a continuous, self-supporting sheet.”
To add color to the material, the team introduced yeast cells that were modified to produce orange, blue, and purple pigments. “These cells can be applied to the fungus-treated fabric so that the color is generated biologically, rather than through conventional synthetic dyes,” Li explains.
The researchers also demonstrated that they could alter the fabric’s properties by adding other fungi—for example, making it self-cleaning by repelling water droplets. For UV protection, they added Aspergillus niger, a mold commonly found on fruits and vegetables. It forms a dark layer on the material’s surface containing the pigment melanin, which absorbs ultraviolet radiation.
If the fabric is damaged, fresh wet fungal granules can be applied to the damaged area, and the fungus simply grows over the affected spot.
In dry conditions, most biological activity slows down significantly, and the cells can remain inactive or dormant, Li says. But in moist conditions with nutrients available, some cells can become active again. This latent biological capability enables functions like regeneration and repair, and also means the material is easily biodegradable, showing nearly complete visible decomposition in soil within just 40 days.
Li and his team created a dress from their fungal material, but no one has worn it yet. “We treated it as quite a valuable exhibit, and it was sewn in a small size,” Li says. “Maybe next time we should find a few miniature and brave volunteers to try it on and see how it looks in motion.”
Justin Beardsley from the University of Sydney in Australia says the dress’s biodegradability is striking compared to what we currently have regarding waste disposal from fast fashion.
But this is also a drawback, because you wouldn’t want to wear something that degrades too easily, as “it would break down while you’re wearing it,” he notes.
Since the fabric is “alive,” Beardsley suggests that one day it might be possible to alter its properties in real time. “If there were a way to make it water-repellent for a while, reducing breathability during rain, that would be fantastic, and then you could switch back to a more breathable, less water-repellent version,” he says.
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