Living material makes harmful UV light visible – Functional coating made from proteins and bacteria

Technical University of Munich (TUM)

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Dr. Amelie Skopp, Prof. Dr. Volker Sieber und Matea Marošević. They have developed a coating that reliably indicates exposure to UVA radiation. Their finding could pave the way for further living materials.

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Credit: Astrid Eckert / TUM

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• Commercial surface coatings enhanced with biological components.
• Embedded protein reliably indicates UV‑A exposure through a permanent color change.
• Result could pave the way for further developments in living materials.

T-shirts that warn of excessive sun exposure or labels that reveal damage to light‑sensitive materials: researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed a coating that makes this possible—using proteins and bacteria. The coating reliably detects contact with UV-A radiation, is bio‑based, and could open the door to a wide range of new materials that draw on the biological functions of cells.

The protein mEosFP can blush: when exposed to UV-A light, it shifts from a green shade called “Vegan Villain” to a red known as “End of Summer.” Because of this pronounced color shift, the protein is a strong candidate for UV-A sensors that indicate when certain thresholds are reached. Until now, however, it remained unclear how to integrate such proteins into paints and coatings in a stable, functional way—without compromising material properties.

A team led by Volker Sieber, Professor of Chemistry of Biogenic Resources and Rector of the TUM Campus Straubing, has now engineered a solution to this problem. The result is a sustainable, bio‑based alternative to conventional UV‑A sensors, which typically rely on fossil raw materials such as oil and coal. Their findings could serve as a blueprint for advances in the emerging field of so‑called living materials, which aim to combine the strengths of biology and technology. In these biohybrid materials, organisms such as fungi, algae, proteins, or bacteria are embedded in solid materials so that they can repair themselves, grow, or respond to environmental stimuli.

Bacteria shield the protein

For the study, the team cultivated E. coli bacteria engineered to produce the target protein. At first, they separated the protein from the bacterial cells and mixed the purified protein into paint formulations—without success. The coating showed only weak coloration and its material properties deteriorated: the surface became rough and leathery.

The researchers achieved success once they stopped separating the proteins from the bacteria and incorporated the entire biomass into the formulation. “The bacteria seem to act as a kind of protective space for the proteins, shielding them from the chemical and physical influences within the coating,” explains Amelie Skopp, the study’s lead author.

The color change begins within minutes of exposure, becomes clearly visible after about 15 minutes, and is fully developed after roughly an hour. The more intense the UV-A radiation, the stronger the resulting color. Potential applications include outdoor apparel that warns of excessive UV exposure, storage and shipping of light‑sensitive pharmaceuticals, and monitoring of UV-based surface disinfection processes.

An opportunity in the anthropocene

“We’ve shown that coatings can be equipped with biological added functions without losing their inherent material properties,” says Amelie Skopp. She and co-first author Matea Marošević were recently awarded the TUM IDEAward together with other team members for a start-up concept building on this technology. The team is currently working on a bio-based filtration technology designed to capture volatile organic compounds from industrial processes and convert them into harmless substances.

Volker Sieber is convinced: “Biological systems offer an enormous diversity of functions we can harness. The possibilities range from materials like ours that make environmental conditions visible to future solutions capable of capturing and breaking down hard-to-avoid greenhouse gases such as methane. The fact that we have now managed to stably integrate biological components into coatings is an important starting point for developments we urgently need in light of today’s global challenges.”

Researchers have developed a coating that reliably indicates exposure to UVA radiation. Their finding could pave the way for further living materials. Samples of the purified protein: in the green sample, the color change has not yet occurred, while the red-tinted sample shows a clear coloration.

Credit

Astrid Eckert / TUM

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Journal

Advanced Materials Interfaces

DOI

10.1002/admi.202500125 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Lab-produced tissue samples

Article Title

The Vegan Villain Sets Out to The End of Summer: Functionalized Coatings as Biohybrid UV-Sensors

 

People from low-income communities smoke more, are more addicted and are less likely to quit

Oxford University Press USA

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A new paper in Nicotine and Tobacco Research, published by Oxford University Press, finds that people experiencing more economic disadvantages are more likely to smoke cigarettes, have higher levels of tobacco addiction, and find it harder to quit than those who are most advantaged. This pattern was consistent across different forms and severity of disadvantage.

Despite decades of work by policymakers and reductions in smoking rates, tobacco use is still a leading cause of preventable mortality worldwide. In England, official estimates suggest 11.9% of adults smoke cigarettes. Some 11.6% of American adults smoke. Greater smoking prevalence leads to more tobacco-related disease, disability, and premature death, and prevalence remains higher among more disadvantaged groups.

Researchers from the University of Oxford, University College London and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, supported in part by the National Institute for Health and Care Research , used data from the Smoking Toolkit Study, an ongoing, cross-sectional survey of adults in England, between January 2014 and December 2023, to examine links between smoking behaviors and different measures of disadvantage (measured by occupational social grade, employment status, type of housing, educational level, and household income). They were interested in smoking prevalence, how addicted people were to tobacco, and the number, approach and success of past-year quit attempts of participants.

The investigators found that among the 195,543 adults surveyed inequalities in smoking persist across multiple forms and measures of socioeconomic disadvantage. They found that the odds of smoking were higher with increasing disadvantage when measured by occupational social grade, housing type, educational level, and household income. They also found that urges to smoke were stronger among people experiencing greater disadvantage, when measured by occupational social grade, educational level, and household income, suggesting a greater level of tobacco addiction.

People from lower-status occupations, those with lower household incomes, and those with less education were less likely to have made a quit attempt in the past year compared to those in the most advantaged groups. Electronic cigarettes were the most common aid to help people quit. There were some differences in use of vapes by different types of disadvantage, but patterning of this varied or was not clear.

The researchers also found that, of the people who tried to quit, those who rented or were living in social housing had lower odds of quitting successfully compared to those who owned their houses.

Across all measures of socioeconomic position, the investigation revealed that people experiencing greater disadvantage in England were more likely to smoke than those who were more advantaged and had higher levels of tobacco addiction; this finding was consistent when measured by different measures of economic disadvantage. People from more disadvantaged occupational social grades, with lower household incomes, and with less education were also less likely to have tried to quit smoking in the past year compared to those in the higher status groups.

“While smoking rates have fallen over the last decade, these findings show that smoking remains much higher among people from disadvantaged groups, who tend to be more dependent and find it more difficult to quit,” said the paper’s lead author, Annika Theodoulou. “This pattern was consistent across different forms and types of socioeconomic disadvantage. Continued efforts to increase access to and uptake of stop smoking services among more disadvantaged groups are critical steps for addressing health inequalities caused by disparities in tobacco use.”

The paper, “Smoking and quitting behaviours by different indicators of socioeconomic position in England: a population study, 2014 to 2023,” is available (at midnight on February 11th) at https://doi.org/10.1093/ntr/ntag003.

Direct correspondence to: 
Annika Theodoulou
Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences
University of Oxford
Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road
Oxford, UNITED KINGDOM 
annika.theodoulou@phc.ox.ac.uk

To request a copy of the study, please contact:
Daniel Luzer 
daniel.luzer@oup.com

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Journal

Nicotine & Tobacco Research

DOI

10.1093/ntr/ntag003 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Smoking and quitting behaviours by different indicators of socioeconomic position in England: a population study, 2014 to 2023

Article Publication Date

11-Feb-2026

COI Statement

Author Annika Theodoulou became an associate editor of Nicotine & Tobacco Research in May 2025; this paper was submitted in December 2024 and handled independently. Author Jamie Hartmann-Boyce declares consultancy funding from the US Food and Drug Administration and the Truth Initiative on projects related to tobacco and e-cigarettes.

KRICT develops microfluidic chip for one-step detection of PFAs and other pollutants

Direct analysis of pollutants without pretreatment, even in samples containing sand or soil

National Research Council of Science & Technology

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A joint research team from KRICT and Chungnam National University. From left, Dr. Ju Hyeon Kim (KRICT), student researcher Sung Wook Choi (KRICT), and Professor Jae Bem You (Chungnam National University)

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Credit: Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology(KRICT)

Environmental pollutant analysis typically requires complex sample pretreatment steps such as filtration, separation, and preconcentration. When solid materials such as sand, soil, or food residues are present in water samples, analytical accuracy often decreases, and filtration can unintentionally remove trace-level target pollutants along with the solids.

To address this challenge, a joint research team led by Dr. Ju Hyeon Kim at the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT), in collaboration with Professor Jae Bem You’s group at Chungnam National University, has developed a microfluidic-based analytical device that enables direct extraction and analysis of pollutants from solid-containing samples without any pretreatment.

Water, food, and environmental samples encountered in daily life may contain trace amounts of hazardous contaminants that are invisible to the naked eye. Accurate detection requires selective extraction and concentration of target analytes, a process traditionally achieved using liquid–liquid extraction (LLE). However, conventional LLE requires large volumes of solvents and is difficult to automate. Although liquid–liquid microextraction (LLME) has been introduced to overcome these limitations, its practical application has remained limited because samples containing solid particles still require a filtration step prior to extraction.

Existing analytical approaches typically follow a multistep workflow—solid removal, extraction, and analysis—which increases time and cost while reducing analytical reliability. These limitations pose significant challenges in fields closely related to public health, including environmental monitoring, drinking water safety, and pharmaceutical residue analysis.

The research team overcame these issues by designing a trap-based microfluidic device that confines a small volume of extractant droplet inside a microchamber while allowing the sample solution to flow continuously through an adjacent microchannel. This configuration enables rapid and selective mass transfer of target analytes into the extractant, while solid particles pass through the channel without interference. After extraction, the extractant droplet can be retrieved for downstream analysis.

Using this device, the researchers successfully detected perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a representative per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) increasingly regulated due to environmental and health concerns, as well as carbamazepine (CBZ), an anticonvulsant pharmaceutical compound. Notably, CBZ was extracted directly from sand-containing slurry samples without filtration. PFOA signals were detected within five minutes, and CBZ extracted from slurry samples was clearly identified using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC).

The results demonstrate that the proposed microfluidic platform significantly reduces analytical steps while maintaining high reliability, highlighting its potential as a compact and automatable solution for environmental pollution monitoring, food safety inspection, and pharmaceutical and bioanalytical applications.

Dr. Kim noted that “integrating multiple pretreatment steps into a single process offers substantial advantages for on-site analysis and automated systems,” while KRICT President Young-Kuk Lee emphasized that “this technology can enhance the reliability of environmental and food safety analyses that directly impact public health.”

The study was published as a cover article in ACS Sensors (Impact Factor: 9.1; top 3.2% in JCR Analytical Chemistry) in December 2025. Dr. Ju Hyeon Kim (KRICT) and Professor Jae Bem You (Chungnam National University) served as corresponding authors, with Sung Wook Choi as the first author.

The research team is extracting pollutants by flowing contaminated slurry through a microfluidic chip.

Pollutants extracted within the microfluidic chips

Credit

Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology(KRICT)

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KRICT is a non-profit research institute funded by the Korean government. Since its foundation in 1976, KRICT has played a leading role in advancing national chemical technologies in the fields of chemistry, material science, environmental science, and chemical engineering. Now, KRICT is moving forward to become a globally leading research institute tackling the most challenging issues in the field of Chemistry and Engineering and will continue to fulfill its role in developing chemical technologies that benefit the entire world and contribute to maintaining a healthy planet. More detailed information on KRICT can be found at https://www.krict.re.kr/eng/

The research was supported by the KRICT Core Research Program, the National Research Foundation of Korea, and the Korea–Switzerland Innovation Program.

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Journal

ACS Sensors

DOI

10.1021/acssensors.5c01878 

Article Title

Trap-Based Microfluidic Device with Retrievable Droplet for the Analysis of Pollutants from Slurry Solutions

 

How psychedelic drugs affect the brain

Ruhr-University Bochum

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Dirk Jancke (left) und Callum White haben für das Paper zusammengearbeitet. 

 

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Credit: © RUB, Marquard

Hallucinations fill the gap

Psychedelics activate a specific serotonin receptor. At least 14 different receptors are known where the neurotransmitter serotonin binds. Psychedelics have the highest affinity for the 2A receptor, which, among other effects, acts suppressive in the visual brain and also influences learning processes. “We have observed in earlier studies that visual processes in the brain are suppressed by this receptor,” says Callum White, first author of the study. “This means that visual information about things happening in the outside world becomes less accessible to our consciousness. To fill this gap in the puzzle, our brain inserts fragments from memory – it hallucinates.”

Short-term oscillations trigger communication between brain areas

In their current study, the authors show how this happens. Psychedelics intensify oscillations in visual brain areas. Generally speaking, oscillations are synchronized neural activity waves that modulate communication between brain regions. After administration of psychedelics the scientist found that visual areas produce increasingly low-frequency (5-Hz) activity waves that activate another brain region, the retrosplenial cortex. This area forms a major hub for the exchange with stored information. The brain thus switches to a new mode in which access to ongoing events is hindered and instead perceptions are increasingly generated from memory contents, “a bit like partial dreaming,” says Professor Dirk Jancke, leader of the study.

Visualizing the dynamics of brain activity in real-time

To visualize these complex processes, the scientists use an optical method that records neural activity in real-time over the entire brain surface. The mice developed by Professor Thomas Knöpfel from Hong Kong Baptist University are genetically manipulated so that they express fluorescent proteins in defined cell types. “We therefore know exactly in our experiments that the measured fluorescent signals originate from pyramidal cells of the cortical layers 2/3 and 5, which mediate communication within and between brain regions,” says Jancke.

Developing new therapy approaches

The results support new approaches in psychology that use psychedelics to treat, for example, anxiety disorders or depression. “When used under medical supervision, such substances can temporarily change the state of the brain to selectively recall positive memory content and restructure learned, excessively negative thought patterns, i.e., to be able to unlearn negative context. It will be exciting to see how such therapies are further personalized in the future,” says Jancke.

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Journal

Communications Biology

DOI

10.1038/s42003-025-09492-9 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Psychedelic 5-HT2A Agonist Increases Spontaneous and Evoked 5-Hz Oscillations in Visual and Retrosplenial Cortex

Article Publication Date

11-Feb-2026