At first glance, Nam-Joon Cho’s lab at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University looks like your typical research facility—scientists toiling away, crowded workbenches, a hum of machinery in the background. But the orange-yellow stains on the lab coats slung on hooks hint at a less-usual subject matter under study.
The powdery stain is pollen: microscopic grains containing male reproductive cells that trees, weeds, and grasses release seasonally. But Cho isn’t studying irksome effects like hay fever, or what pollen means for the plants that make it. Instead, the material scientist has spent a decade pioneering and refining techniques to remodel pollen’s rigid outer shell—made of a polymer so tough it’s sometimes called “the diamond of the plant world”—transforming the grains to a jam-like consistency.
This microgel, Cho believes, could be a versatile building block for many eco-friendly materials, including paper, film, and sponges.