Even as kumihimo masters and cultural historians work to study historic braids to recover a significant though obscure part of Japan's cultural heritage, scientists have studied their structures for altogether new and innovative uses. Below is a marudai, traditionally used to braid round and square kumihimo, shown with amino acids and a braid that is a strand of DNA on the cover of Genes to Cells, a peer-reviewed scientific journal on microbiology.

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While kumihimo tools have not yet been used in genetics, they are being employed in other industries to create new technology with traditional methods. Researchers at Kansai University have created wearable piezoelectric sensors that detect the wearer's movements and can translate muscle contractions into data (Tajitsu et al. 2020, 772). These have potential uses in medicine and fitness, where small muscle movements may be easier to study than by other more invasive or less accurate means. The unique properties of kumihimo structures avoided the problems that other methods, such as knitting, created with the signals.

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