Team:TU Delft-Leiden/Project/Life science/curli

Curli Module

Background Information

In de module CONDUCTIVE CURLI we combine the advantages of live bacteria with the benefits of nonliving materials. A great advantage of bacteria is their ability to respond to the environment, but unfortunately, they have limited possibility to create new functionality all of the sudden. However, if you would find a way to combine bacteria with nonliving materials, you can choose your material in a way it meets your requirements. A beautiful example of these “living materials” has recently been shown by MIT engineers, who were able to reprogram E. coli in a way in which the bacteria were actually making gold nanowires and conducting biofilms when gold nanoparticles were present [1].

For the CONDUCTIVE CURLI part of the project we induce curli formation, which are extracellular amyloids involved in adhesion, cell aggregation and biofilm formation [2]. However, our curli will carry histidine tags, which facilitates binding of the gold nanoparticles to the curli [2]. The gold nanoparticles on their turn end up in the biofilm, improving the conductivity of the extracellular environment. This change in conductivty is easily measurable by our ELECTRACE device, but in combination with the extracellular electron transport module , it could even result in enhanced extracellular electron transport.

Cloning Strategy and Characterisation of this module

References

1. Chen et al., Synthesis and patterning of tunable multiscale materials with engineered cells. Nature Materials 13, 515–523 (2014)
2. M. M. Barnhart and M. R. Chapman. Curli Biogenesis and Function. Annu Rev Microbiol. 60, 131–147 (2006)