Inspired by natural materials such as bone -- a matrix of minerals and other substances, including living cells -- MIT engineers have coaxed¹（哄骗，劝诱） bacterial² cells to produce biofilms that can incorporate nonliving materials, such as gold nanoparticles and quantum dots. These "living materials" combine the advantages of live cells, which respond to their environment, produce complex biological molecules⁴, and span multiple length scales, with the benefits of nonliving materials, which add functions such as conducting electricity or emitting light.

 

The new materials represent a simple demonstration⁵ of the power of this approach, which could one day be used to design more complex devices such as solar cells, self-healing materials, or diagnostic sensors⁶, says Timothy Lu, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and biological engineering. Lu is the senior author of a paper describing the living functional⁷ materials in the March 23 issue of Nature Materials.

 

"Our idea is to put the living and the nonliving worlds together to make hybrid⁸ materials that have living cells in them and are functional," Lu says. "It's an interesting way of thinking about materials synthesis, which is very different from what people do now, which is usually a top-down approach."

 

The paper's lead author is Allen Chen, an MIT-Harvard MD-PhD student. Other authors are postdocs Zhengtao Deng, Amanda Billings, Urartu Seker, and Bijan Zakeri; recent MIT graduate Michelle Lu; and graduate student Robert Citorik.

 

 

Lu and his colleagues chose to work with the bacterium⁹ E. coli because it naturally produces biofilms that contain so-called "curli fibers¹¹" -- amyloid proteins that help E. coli attach to surfaces. Each curli fiber¹⁰ is made from a repeating chain of identical protein subunits called CsgA, which can be modified by adding protein fragments called peptides. These peptides can capture nonliving materials such as gold nanoparticles, incorporating them into the biofilms.

 

By programming cells to produce different types of curli fibers under certain conditions, the researchers were able to control the biofilms' properties and create gold nanowires, conducting biofilms, and films studded with quantum dots, or tiny crystals that exhibit quantum mechanical properties. They also engineered the cells so they could communicate with each other and change the composition of the biofilm over time.

 

First, the MIT team disabled the bacterial cells' natural ability to produce CsgA, then replaced it with an engineered genetic¹² circuit that produces CsgA but only under certain conditions -- specifically, when a molecule³ called AHL is present. This puts control of curli fiber production in the hands of the researchers, who can adjust the amount of AHL in the cells' environment. When AHL is present, the cells secrete¹³（藏匿，分泌） CsgA, which forms curli fibers that coalesce¹⁴ into a biofilm, coating the surface where the bacteria are growing.

 

The researchers then engineered E. coli cells to produce CsgA tagged with peptides composed of clusters of the amino acid histidine, but only when a molecule called aTc is present. The two types of engineered cells can be grown together in a colony, allowing researchers to control the material composition of the biofilm by varying the amounts of AHL and aTc in the environment. If both are present, the film will contain a mix of tagged and untagged fibers. If gold nanoparticles are added to the environment, the histidine tags will grab onto them, creating rows of gold nanowires, and a network that conducts electricity.

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