Materials Timothy K Lu Seed Many natural biological systems such as biofilms shells and skeletal tissues are able to create multifunctional and environmentally responsive multiscale ID: 552996
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Living Cells Used to Create Patterned Devices of Non-Living
MaterialsTimothy K. Lu (Seed)
Many natural biological systems — such as biofilms, shells and skeletal tissues — are able to create multifunctional and environmentally responsive multiscale assemblies of living and non-living components. MIT MRSEC researchers have developed a synthetic-biology platform for engineering bacterial biofilms for the synthesis and patterning of non-living materials across multiple length scales.By using inducible genetic and cellular communication circuits to regulate Escherichia coli curli amyloid production, bacteria can be taught to organize amyloid fibrils at many different length scales. When these organized fibrils are combined with inorganic materials, such as gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and quantum dots (QDs), it is possible to create an environmentally responsive biofilm-based electrical switch and to manipulate a wide range of new nanomaterials including gold nanowires and nanorods, and fluorescent quantum dots co-localized with gold nanoparticles. This work lays a foundation for synthesizing, patterning, and controlling functional “living” materials containing engineered cells and non-living materials.
Engineered cells can be modified to create biofilms that synthesize biological nanowires that can be used to organize synthetic materials such as gold nanoparticles and quantum dots.
Chen, A.Y., Deng
,
Z., Billings, A., Seker, U., Lu, M., Citorik, R., Zakeri, B., and Lu, T.K., “Synthesis and patterning of tunable multiscale materials with engineered cells”, Nature Materials, published online March 23, 2014.
This work was
supported
in part by the MRSEC Program of the National Science Foundation under award number DMR-0819762
.