What do you get when you combine the high-tech world’s “wonder material”—graphene—with a lowly fungus? A bionic mushroom, of course.

Researchers at the Stevens Institute of Technology have reported in the journal Nano Letters the seamless merging of cyanobacterial cells and graphene nanoribbons on the cap of a mushroom. The resulting combination represents a three-dimensional interface between the microbiological kingdom (cyanobacteria and mushroom) and smart electronic nanomaterial (graphene nanoribbons).

The researchers believe that this approach—which they refer to as bacterial nanobionics—can spur the development of next-generation «designer bio-hybrid» functional architectures for applications ranging from sensors to “smart” hydrogel materials.