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Background:
Cell surface display technology, which utilizes genetic engineering to modify proteins on cellular surfaces, has been instrumental in various biotechnology applications, including enzyme engineering and vaccine development. However, current cell surface display approaches face significant limitations in terms of display density and lack the ability to drive self-organization of cells into functional materials with programmable properties. Traditional techniques primarily use cells as factories to produce polymers rather than leveraging the cells themselves as integral components of the material. This creates challenges for controlling material properties and often requires extensive manipulation of cells, resulting in manufacturing processes that are costly, labor-intensive, and difficult to scale up. These limitations have hindered the potential of living cells to serve as dynamic, responsive materials that could revolutionize fields ranging from tissue engineering to smart materials and bioremediation.
Technical Overview:
Northeastern researchers have developed a novel cell-surface display platform that transforms Escherichia coli into self-organizing living materials with dynamically reconfigurable properties. The technology centers on an innovative protein display system that achieves unprecedented surface density while simultaneously enabling cells to self-organize into programmable patterns. By incorporating intrinsically disordered proteins into the display platform, the researchers have created cellular condensates that can be reorganized dynamically in response to specific stimuli. The system follows a methodical approach involving bacterial engineering, protein display optimization, interaction programming, and materials assembly that collectively result in living materials with genetically controllable properties such as viscosity. This platform represents a significant advancement over previous techniques by utilizing the cells themselves as materials rather than merely as factories for polymer production. This novel approach requires minimal manipulation of cells, offering considerable potential for scale-up and eventually enabling sustainable manufacturing of complex, responsive materials.
Benefits:
- Extremely high density surface display on gram-negative bacteria.
- Enables programmable self-organization of living cells into functional materials with dynamically controlled properties.
- Provides genetic control over material characteristics, allowing precise tuning of properties such as viscosity.
- Simplifies manufacturing processes with minimal cell manipulation requirements, enhancing scale-up potential.
- Creates responsive, reconfigurable materials that adapt to environmental changes or specific stimuli.
- Offers a sustainable approach to materials production using living bacterial systems.
Application:
- Directed evolution of enzymes or binding proteins.
- Development of customized biological tissues for research and medical applications.
- Creation of smart materials with self-healing or environmentally responsive capabilities.
- Environmental remediation through engineered bacterial communities with specific functions.
- Living cell-based therapeutics with programmable behaviors.
- Sustainable manufacturing of complex biomaterials with reduced environmental impact.
Opportunity:
- License
- Research collaboration
