Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) developed a "living material" using bacterial cells fused together with quantum dots and gold nanoparticles.
These materials function like living cells and have the ability to react to their environment and develop biological molecules.
"Our idea is to put the living and the nonliving worlds together to make hybrid materials that have living cells in them and are functional," assistant professor of electrical engineering and biological engineering and of the study's authors said in a press release. "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 materials were made using E.coli bacteria due to their ability to produce biolfims containing "curli fibers". This protein helps E.coli to affix itself to different types of surfaces. The curlifiber is composed of a chain of protein called CsgA and this could be modified using peptides such as gold nanoparticles to create a new biofilm.
The researchers then programmed the cells to produce curlifibers depending on the situation and they were able to control the biolfilm's behavior in various environment settings. They also explained that these cells can communicate with each other, which helps them control the reaction of the biofilm.
"It's a really simple system but what happens over time is you get curli that's increasingly labeled by gold particles. It shows that indeed you can make cells that talk to each other and they can change the composition of the material over time," Lu explained in the press release. "Ultimately, we hope to emulate how natural systems, like bone, form. No one tells bone what to do, but it generates a material in response to environmental signals."
These living materials could be used for battery and solar technologies. Lu says that he and his team are also thinking of coating the biofilms with an enzyme that process cellulose, and if successful, this could have a lot of applications in the field of biotechnology.
This study was published in the March 23 issue of Nature Materials.
