Active camouflage from a polymer: Human skin is soft and compliant, but it can quickly become stiff when deformed to prevent injury. Chameleon skin can change color when the animal goes from a relaxed to an excited state. Although these properties can be captured individually in synthetic materials, the combination of different dynamic responses can be hard to control. Vatankhah-Varnosfaderani et al. created triblock copolymers of the ABA variety, where the A blocks have a linear structure and the B blocks are like bottlebrushes. When strained, these polymers stiffened like human skin and changed color, thus giving the materials a range of adaptive properties. Science , this issue p. 1509

Injectable hydrogels are desired in many biomedical applications due to their minimally invasive deployment to the body and their ability to introduce drugs. However, current injectables suffer from mechanical mismatch with tissue, fragility, water expulsion, and high viscosity. To address these issues, we design brush-like macromolecules that concurrently provide softness, firmness, strength, fluidity, and swellability. The synthesized linear-bottlebrush-linear (LBL) copolymers facilitate improved injectability as the compact conformation of bottlebrush blocks results in low solution viscosity, while the thermoresponsive linear blocks permit prompt gelation at 37°C. The resulting hydrogels mimic the deformation response of supersoft tissues such as adipose and brain while withstanding deformations of 700% and precluding water expulsion upon gelation. Given their low cytotoxicity and mild inflammation in vivo, the developed materials will have vital implications for reconstructive surgery, tissue engineering, and drug delivery applications.