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Engineering Cellular Photocomposite Materials Using Convective Assembly.

ABSTRACT: Fabricating industrial-scale photoreactive composite materials containing living cells, requires a deposition strategy that unifies colloid science and cell biology. Convective assembly can rapidly deposit suspended particles, including whole cells and waterborne latex polymer particles into thin (<10 µm thick), organized films with engineered adhesion, composition, thickness, and particle packing. These highly ordered composites can stabilize the diverse functions of photosynthetic cells for use as biophotoabsorbers, as artificial leaves for hydrogen or oxygen evolution, carbon dioxide assimilation, and add self-cleaning capabilities for releasing or digesting surface contaminants. This paper reviews the non-biological convective assembly literature, with an emphasis on how the method can be modified to deposit living cells starting from a batch process to its current state as a continuous process capable of fabricating larger multi-layer biocomposite coatings from diverse particle suspensions. Further development of this method will help solve the challenges of engineering multi-layered cellular photocomposite materials with high reactivity, stability, and robustness by clarifying how process, substrate, and particle parameters affect coating microstructure. We also describe how these methods can be used to selectively immobilize photosynthetic cells to create biomimetic leaves and compare these biocomposite coatings to other cellular encapsulation systems.

SUBMITTER: Jenkins JS

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5452526 | biostudies-other | 2013 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Project description:Natural materials, such as bone, integrate living cells composed of organic molecules together with inorganic components. This enables combinations of functionalities, such as mechanical strength and the ability to regenerate and remodel, which are not present in existing synthetic materials. Taking a cue from nature, we propose that engineered 'living functional materials' and 'living materials synthesis platforms' that incorporate both living systems and inorganic components could transform the performance and the manufacturing of materials. As a proof-of-concept, we recently demonstrated that synthetic gene circuits in Escherichia coli enabled biofilms to be both a functional material in its own right and a materials-synthesis platform. To demonstrate the former, we engineered E. coli biofilms into a chemical-inducer-responsive electrical switch. To demonstrate the latter, we engineered E. coli biofilms to dynamically organize biotic-abiotic materials across multiple length scales, template gold nanorods, gold nanowires, and metal/semiconductor heterostructures, and synthesize semiconductor nanoparticles (Chen, A. Y. et al. (2014) Synthesis and patterning of tunable multiscale materials with engineered cells. Nat. Mater. 13, 515-523.). Thus, tools from synthetic biology, such as those for artificial gene regulation, can be used to engineer the spatiotemporal characteristics of living systems and to interface living systems with inorganic materials. Such hybrids can possess novel properties enabled by living cells while retaining desirable functionalities of inorganic systems. These systems, as living functional materials and as living materials foundries, would provide a radically different paradigm of materials performance and synthesis-materials possessing multifunctional, self-healing, adaptable, and evolvable properties that are created and organized in a distributed, bottom-up, autonomously assembled, and environmentally sustainable manner.

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Engineering Cellular Photocomposite Materials Using Convective Assembly.

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