The furniture of the future might be lab-grown thanks to a breakthrough at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In May 2022, the university announced that researchers discovered how to grow wood-like material around 100 times faster than it takes for a tree to reach maturity, potentially creating a path toward limiting deforestation, as well as waste and harmful pollution from manufacturing.
“There is a lot of potential to expand this and grow three-dimensional structures,” Ph.D. graduate Ashley Beckwith, the lead author of the study, said in the press release by MIT News.
To produce the material, the researchers used cells from the common zinnia, a type of summer flower. They grew the cells in a liquid medium for two days before moving them to a nutrient-packed, hormone-infused gel mixture.
“In the human body, you have hormones that determine how your cells develop and how certain traits emerge….
