Despite important breakthroughs in bottom-up synthetic biology, a major challenge still remains the construction of free-standing, macroscopic, and robust materials from protocell building blocks that are stable in water and capable of emergent behaviors. Herein, a new floating mold technique for the fabrication of millimeter- to centimeter-sized protocellular materials (PCMs) of any shape that overcomes most of the current challenges in prototissue engineering is reported. Significantly, this technique also allows for the generation of 2D periodic arrays of PCMs that display an emergent non-equilibrium spatiotemporal sensing behavior. These arrays are capable of collectively translating the information provided by the external environment and are encoded in the form of propagating reaction–diffusion fronts into a readable dynamic signal output. Overall, the methodology opens up a route to the fabrication of macroscopic and robust tissue-like materials with emer-gent behaviors, providing a new paradigm of bottom-up synthetic biology and biomimetic materials science.
