A new fashion statement comes to town: T. Rex leather. How it's made.
Janet LoehrkeThere's alligator boots, snake-skin belts and now a world's first, Tyrannosaurus Rex purse.
Scientists and designers have created a handbag manufactured from fragments of fossilized Tyrannosaurus Rex remains. The handbag is a unique invention meant to showcase the benefits of laboratory-grown leather.
The main objective of biotech firms, The Organoid Company and Lab-Grown Leather Ltd. along with VML, is to develop what they claim will be a more humane and sustainable substitute for leather in the high-end market, made from fossil T. rex collagen. For now, it's a one-of-a-kind collector's piece, designed by high-end Polish tech wear label Enfin Levé. But acceptance among the elite and influencers can lead to mainstream products.
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The teal-colored bag will be displayed on a rock in a cage under a replica of a T. rex at Amsterdam's Art Zoo museum until May 11, after which it will be auctioned, with a reported starting price of more than half a million dollars.
How is T. rex bioderived leather made in a lab?
Scientists behind the initiative said the material was developed using protein fragments extracted from dinosaur remains that were inserted into an unidentified animal's cell to produce collagen that was turned into leather.
The lab-grown Leather utilizes a unique "scaffold-free" tissue engineering technology, which allows cells (including engineered cells) to form their own natural structure, in contrast to many plant-based alternatives and certain other lab-grown leather methods.
The three companies announced last year that they had been developing T. rex leather. They used AI-assisted biology to synthesize new DNA into specialized cells to make a material that behaves like leather.
"By reconstructing and optimizing ancient protein sequences, we’ve designed T-Rex leather inspired by prehistoric biology and cloned it into a custom-engineered cell line," The Organoid Company CEO Thomas Mitchell said in a statement. "It's a bold example of synthetic biology extending beyond medicine into sustainable material innovation."
According to the companies, synthetic T. rex leather has some of the same protective qualities as real T. rex skin, but unlike real leather, it doesn't require tanning, a chemical-intensive process that may pollute water.
"By working with reconstructed prehistoric biology, we’re introducing a material that stands on its own," said VML's Korsten. "Something original, rather than an alternative. In terms of scale, the long-term ambition is to see this kind of innovation adopted more widely across fashion and accessories."
Contributing: Mike Snider, USA TODAY; Reuters