There are engineered living materials that can help with human health, energy and the environment. They can be built big and tailored.
Rice University scientists have created colonies of engineeredbacteria that are self-assembling from the bottom up. They can be programmed to remove pollutants from the environment.
Ajo-Franklin has been working on the creation of ELMs for a long time.
Ajo- Franklin said that they are making material frombacteria that acts like putty. It's one of the prettiest things about it because it's so easy to make, just needing a little motion, a few vitamins and a bunch of bugs.
The lab's creation of flexible, adaptable ELMs using Caulobacter crescentus as a biological building block was detailed in a study this week. The process of designingbacteria to self-assemble has been a long and complex one.
The biopolymer matrix that gives the material it's form was engineered by thebacteria. The C. crescentus has aprotein that scales on a snake. The researchers modified the bacterium to express a BUD version, which they call BUD (for bottom-up de novo, as in from scratch), with characteristics that are favorable to forming ELMs, as well as providing tags for future functionalization.
The goal of the study was to prove that it is possible to grow materials from cells. In case of damage, living cells allow the material to self-assemble and self-repair. They can be further engineered to do non-native functions.
BUD-ELM is one of the most flexible examples of an autonomously formed, macroscopic ELM. She said that it showed a unique combination of high performance and sustainable practices. It could be used to generate many different materials.
Researchers say that elMs grow in a flask in about 24 hours. The thin skin forms at the air- water interface. The ELM is encouraged by constant shaking of the flask. The material sinks to the bottom once it's sufficiently large.
Robert Tesoriero Jr., co-author and graduate student, said that the shaking process influences how large a material is. The optimal range of material we can get in a flask of about 250 millimeters is what we're trying to find. It's about the size of a small finger.
They collectively organize over four orders of magnitude, about 10,000 times bigger than a single cell, with a cell that is less than a millimeter in size.
She said that their materials are strong enough to survive in a jar on the shelf for three weeks at room temperature.
The lab was able to demonstrate that the BUD-ELM could remove cadmium from a solution.
Ajo- Franklin said it should be easy to modify BUD-ELMs because they carry tags.
Tesoriero said there was a lot of room to play.
While we love cauliflower, it's not the most popular kid on the block, according to Ajo- Franklin. People haven't heard of it. We want to know if these rules can be applied to otherbacteria.
In low-resource settings, she said ELMs could be helpful. C. crescentus is ideal for this because it requires less food.
Ajo-Franklin wants to use the material to remove heavy metals from water and then grow it on the spot. The idea of being able to do it without a lot of resources is compelling to me.
The co-authors of the paper are a graduate student, a researcher, and two lab managers. Ajo- Franklin is a professor at the university.
More information: Sara Molinari et al, A de novo matrix for macroscopic living materials from bacteria, Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-33191-2 Journal information: Nature Communications
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