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martyb writes:

Yarn created from skin cells can be woven into human textiles:

Medical textiles are materials that can be used to heal skin and other body parts. They can also replace parts of damaged organs. But not all patients have the same reactions to all textiles, because the materials are often treated as foreign agents by the immune system. So scientists continue to look for ways to create textiles that the human body will accept. In this new effort, the researchers have created textiles out of human fibroblasts—cells that normally assist with the production of collagen and other fibers. The body will not reject them because they are natural human cells.

The researchers have created a variety of textiles out of the material for use in a wide variety of applications. The researchers first grew skin cell fibroblasts into sheets of material. The sheets were then fashioned into desired shapes. In many instances, they were cut into strings for applications such as suturing wounds. The strings could also be twisted or knotted to create braids or used like yarn for knitting or crochet applications.

I can well imagine how useful this would be for people recovering from a traumatic injury or burn.

Laure Magnan et al. Human Textiles: a cell-synthesized yarn as a truly "bio" material for tissue engineering applications., Acta Biomaterialia (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.actbio.2020.01.037

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