{"title":"Material agency: operationalizing the living/nonliving interface in engineered materials.","authors":"Andrea Belluati","doi":"10.1016/j.tibtech.2026.07.036","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The label 'engineered living materials' groups devitalized mycelium composites with metabolically active biosensors, applying shared metrics to systems with fundamentally different failure modes, safety profiles, and engineering requirements. This forum proposes a four-class operational taxonomy, a Maximum Agency Potential classification principle, and a minimum reporting standard that classify systems by biological agency dependence during use.</p>","PeriodicalId":23324,"journal":{"name":"Trends in biotechnology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":16.6000,"publicationDate":"2026-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Trends in biotechnology","FirstCategoryId":"5","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tibtech.2026.07.036","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"BIOTECHNOLOGY & APPLIED MICROBIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The label 'engineered living materials' groups devitalized mycelium composites with metabolically active biosensors, applying shared metrics to systems with fundamentally different failure modes, safety profiles, and engineering requirements. This forum proposes a four-class operational taxonomy, a Maximum Agency Potential classification principle, and a minimum reporting standard that classify systems by biological agency dependence during use.
期刊介绍:
Trends in Biotechnology publishes reviews and perspectives on the applied biological sciences, focusing on useful science applied to, derived from, or inspired by living systems.
The major themes that TIBTECH is interested in include:
Bioprocessing (biochemical engineering, applied enzymology, industrial biotechnology, biofuels, metabolic engineering)
Omics (genome editing, single-cell technologies, bioinformatics, synthetic biology)
Materials and devices (bionanotechnology, biomaterials, diagnostics/imaging/detection, soft robotics, biosensors/bioelectronics)
Therapeutics (biofabrication, stem cells, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, antibodies and other protein drugs, drug delivery)
Agroenvironment (environmental engineering, bioremediation, genetically modified crops, sustainable development).