I am collaborating with researchers in residence at the Astera Institute, to produce images that communicate the fundamentals behind a novel technology they are developing to create biomimetic fibers. Their approach is inspired by the way various organisms—including spiders, mussels, and velvet worms—encapsulate proteins inside tiny sacs (vesicles) to enable pre-deployment storage, careful sequencing of constituents, or the triggering of rapid reactions. The team is engineering microfluidic devices to create and manipulate these protein vesicles and transform them in the functionally programmable fibers. Read more about the science on the Astera website.