To export a list of strings from Python to MATLAB using scipy.io, you can use the savemat() function. Here's an example: 

import scipy.io as sio

# Create a list of strings
my_strings = ['hello', 'world', 'how', 'are', 'you']

# Convert the list to a numpy array of dtype 'object'
my_strings_array = np.array(my_strings, dtype='object')

# Save the array to a .mat file
sio.savemat('my_strings.mat', {'my_strings': my_strings_array})

In this example, we first create a list of strings called my_strings. We then convert the list to a numpy array of dtype 'object' (which is required to represent strings). Finally, we save the array to a .mat file using savemat(). The first argument to savemat() is the file name ('my_strings.mat' in this example), and the second argument is a dictionary containing the variable name ('my_strings' in this example) as the key and the numpy array as the value.