Congrats to Dan Birnbaum and Avinash Manjula-Basavanna on their new publication “Hybrid Living Capsules Autonomously Produced by Engineered Bacteria“, out now in Advanced Science. You can find our author final draft before peer review can be read on bioRxiv. The paper helps to push the boundaries of the field of Engineered Living Materials (ELMs) by getting two bacterial species to cooperate on the autonomous fabrication of a 3D shape. Dan accomplished this by figuring out how to get E. coli and G. hansenii to behave together in culture without outcompeting each other. After that he got them to engage in a stepwise building program where G. hansenii makes a cellulose capsule and then E. coli makes curli protein fibers inside the capsule with programable function.