The Lumber Shortage Sucks, But Lab-Grown Wood Could Save Your Next DIY Project
Tim Newcomb - 4h agoWith deforestation and natural disasters decimating timber stands, lab-grown options offer hope for the future of building.
MIT researchers can customize properties of plant materials to tweak them for different uses.
The lab-based process can reduce time and waste from the process.
As wood grows more scarce across the globe—think deforestation and forest-devastating wildfires—researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have a plan: to grow wood-like timber in a lab. And the MIT effort comes fully customizable, taking plant material and modifying it to the needs of DIYers just like you.
In the MIT project, researchers crafted wood-like plant material in the lab, adjusting chemicals in the growth process to precisely control the physical and mechanical properties, such as stiffness and density. That makes the end result potentially viable as a wood substitute in a variety of construction projects.
“This work demonstrates the power that a technology at the interface between engineering and biology can bring to bear on an environmental challenge,” Jeffrey Borenstein, a biomedical engineer and group leader at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, says in a May 25 news release. He adds that the work is “leveraging advances originally developed for health care applications.”
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-lumber-shortage-sucks-but-lab-grown-wood-could-save-your-next-diy-project/ar-AAYgMIr?bk=1&bk=1&ocid=msedgntp&cvid=6ae881bbccd74ab78d09cd8a00553395