The Future of ActiveWear Lies in Living Bacteria

The future of athletic wear is closer than we think and we’re not talking about dry-wick fabrics or lace-free shoes you can manually pump. In collaboration with New Balance, MIT Media Lab is combining biology and engineering to develop Biologic, responsive sportswear that reacts to temperature changes in the body during activity using humidity sensitive bacteria. Using living cells grown in a lab called nanoactuators, “Second Skin” responds to rising body temperature to activate flaps around heat zones that causes them to open up to ventilate and cool the body down faster.

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Biologic from Tangible Media Group on Vimeo.