Rheology:
Conducted with a Discovery HR-3 Hybrid Rheometer and Trios software (TA Instruments, DE, USA). A 40 mm Peltier steel plate was used in a parallel plate setup with a gap of 500 μm. 1.5 mL hydrogels were used for investigations. All experiments were conducted at plate temperatures of 37 oC. Each assessment was composed of three individual analyses. Oscillation frequency analysis was conducted at 0.5% strain, 0.1 – 100 rad/s. Oscillation amplitude analysis was conducted using an angular frequency of 6.28319 rad/s, with a strain range of 0.01 – 50%. Flow analysis was conducted over an increasing shear rate of 0.01 to 100 1/s with a 5s equilibration time and 30s averaging time. 

GFP quantification:
100 μL acceptor-phase buffer duplicates (from GFP SIMI assays) were added to black plastic 96 well Nunclon Delta plates (Thermo #137101). The samples were measured for fluorescence intensity with a FLUOstar Omega plate reader using Omega control and data analysis software (BMG Labtech). The excitation wavelength was set at 480 nm, and the emission wavelength set at 520 nm.