Collaborative Research: Foundations of programmable living materials through synthetic biofilm engineering and quantitative computational modeling

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Non-technical descriptionWhy can a tree self-grow into a complex shape and even heal if you break off a branch, while one’s furniture needs to be crafted and be repaired when damaged? Questions like this guide the future vision of ‘programmable biomaterials’ – moving beyond the traditional ‘nonliving’ materials humans have been utilizing for millennia. Wouldn’t it be exciting to just grow a self-healing table? Recent discoveries in biology and inventions in the field of bioengineering suggest that such a vision could become a reality in the not-too-distant future. Toward this goal, this project will modify microscopically small bacteria so that they can selectively stick together in desired macroscopic patterns and structures – similarly to differently colored Lego Bricks. The materials properties of macroscopic biomaterials grown from such bacteria can then be to tuned, for example, they could be hard like wood or more malleable like clay, and they could even be able to rapidly change between hard and soft. And then there are the truly novel biomaterials aspects: As these cells can still divide and grow and move – this macroscopic material could then change its shape and/or intelligently respond to external forces. Combining experiments and simulations, the researchers will investigate how such biomaterials can be realized and programmed. This project also includes outreach activities that will enable local school children to use bacteria and light in order to grow and pattern such bacterial biomaterials.Technical descriptionThe ability to engineer functional multicellular biomaterial is currently very limited as suitable biomaterial components and self-assembly algorithms are lacking. In nature, many bacterial species organize into biofilms that perform complex cooperative functions, ranging from synthesis and transport of chemicals to directed 3D self-assembly and self-repair. Based on previously synthetic bacterial adhesins developed by the researchers, this project will now integrate a synthetic cell-cell adhesin logic with self-replicating swarming bacteria and establish the foundation for programmable biomaterials. The team combines biophysical modeling and synthetic biology to study these multicellular materials. The project is structured in four aims: (i) Development of bioengineering tools to enable control over deposition and assembly of bacterial cells to generate ‘material blocks’, (ii) patterning of such blocks into sub-tiles with distinct tile-interfaces in between – in order to achieve future spatial separation of different functions, (iii) develop modeling approaches that can predict the starting conditions required for these bacteria to generate a material that is patterned in the desired way, and (iv) take such blocks and have them self-assemble in a rational manner into larger-scale 3D living materials. The researchers will work also with local science teachers and educational professionals to implement and evaluate the use of simpler versions of such biomaterials in schools with a focus on underrepresented minorities. The students will fabricate and pattern simple bacterial materials themselves. Furthermore, they will model the dynamics if these systems with a web applet.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.