Embedding Living Cells with a Mechanically Reinforced and Functionally Programmable Hydrogel Fiber Platform

Abstract

Living materials represent a new frontier in functional material design, integrating the synthetic biology tools to endow materials with programmable, dynamic and life‐like characteristics. However, a major challenge in creating living materials is balancing the tradeoff between structural stability, mechanical performance, and functional programmability. To address this challenge, we propose a sheath‐core living hydrogel fiber platform that synergistically integrates living bacteria with hydrogel fibers to achieve both functional diversity and structural and mechanical robustness. In the design, microfluidic spinning was used to produce hydrogel fiber, which offers advantages in both structural and functional designability due to their hierarchical porous architectures that can be tailored and their mechanical performance that can be enhanced through a variety of post‐processing approaches. By introducing living bacteria, we endowed the platform with programmable functionality and life‐like capabilities. This work reconstructed the genetic circuits of living bacteria to express chromoproteins and fluorescent proteins as two prototypes that enabled the coloration of living fibers and sensing water pollutants by monitoring the amount of fluorescent protein expressed. Altogether, this study established a structure‐property‐function optimized living hydrogel fiber platform, providing a new tool for accelerating the practical applications of the emerging living material system.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

Applications of Serine Integrases in Synthetic Biology over the Past Decade

“…As previously reported, serine integrases were active in a wide range of hosts, including not only prokaryotes (E. coli [66], Pseudomonas [104], Rhodococcus [105], and other nonmodel bacteria [56]), but also eukaryotes (Saccharomyces cerevisiae [67] and mammalian cell lines [68][69][70][71]106,107]), animals (Drosophila [63] and mouse [72]), and plants (tobacco [62,73] and Arabidopsis [61,74]) (Figure 8, top). However, it is necessary to provide other carriers for microorganisms to resist extreme environments for practical applications such as capsules for engineering living therapeutics [64], hydrogels for bacteria protection [108], and in situ DNA brushes [60] for memory materials design (Figure 8, bottom left).…”

Rainbow screening: Chromoproteins enable visualized molecular cloning

“…Some genetic parts and plasmids were derived from our previous studies. [22,[27][28][29] The correctness of DNA sequences was verified by Sanger sequencing (GENEWIZ). Q5 High-Fidelity DNA polymerase (New England Biolabs), FastPure Gel DNA Extraction Mini Kit (Vazyme), and NEBuilder HiFi DNA Assembly Master Mix (New England Biolabs) were used for molecular cloning.…”

Research progress in artificial gene circuit

“…This self-regulatory approach requires no external control, and the study also suggests that programmable genetic circuits can be extended to design other microbial cells and metabolic pathways. Peng [9] and others have incorporated E. coli with built-in artificial genetic circuits into the production of living materials to express pigmented and fluorescent proteins for fiber staining and contamination monitoring.…”

“…The design and construction of artificial genetic circuits has not only greatly contributed to the understanding of the basic laws of life regulation, but also further enriches the means of modifying and designing natural biological systems from scratch, and provides brand-new solutions for practical needs in the fields of medicine and health [7,8], material design [9], and industrial fermentation [10], etc. ISSN 2616-5910 Vol.…”