UCLA

With the current climate change situation, it is more necessary than ever to generate sustainable infrastructure. Unfortunately, we are unable to produce the materials necessary for such infrastructure at high enough yields. This is largely because of our lack of high-throughput cell screening tools that can select cells based on their behavior in production-relevant (rather than lab) environments. So, we have developed PicoShells, microparticles with a hollow inner cavity where cells are encapsulated and a porous outer shell that allows for direct interaction with the external environment. PicoShells can be placed directly into production environments and therefore may be produce high-yielding cell populations that maintain their phenotypes in production settings.