Building novel functional fibres

将功能设计成材料的能力正在成为一个切实的目标。诸如电子转移、能量转换（光到e-）或酶反应等功能将有可能设计并构建到生物生产的纤维材料中。这种材料所获得的特性在诊断、光学和生物催化方面有许多应用。已知许多生物纤维形成系统是基于碳水化合物和蛋白质，如细菌纤维素或葡聚糖和蛋白质纤维，如胶原蛋白或聚谷氨酸。在这个博士项目中，我们将利用丝状噬菌体（如M13）的特性，这些丝状噬菌体长900 nm × 10 nm，是大肠杆菌分泌的自然产生的自组装分子。当M13噬菌体被浓缩时，它们可以进一步聚集在一起形成纤维状和液晶结构域。含有半胱氨酸的噬菌体将被用来制造含金属的纤维，并测试它们的电子转移。我们将使用酪氨酸酶等酶来功能化表面酪氨酸和转氨酶来靶向赖氨酸残基，以实现噬菌体彼此之间以及与其他丝状蛋白的交联。表面排列的酶进一步功能化将产生具有酶特性的纤维，可用于新型形式，如混合金属/酶催化剂。

The ability to design functions into materials is becoming a tangible goal. Functions such as electron transfer, conversion of energy (light to e-) or enzyme reactions would be possible to design and build into biologically produced fibrous material. The properties gained by such materials could have many applications in diagnostics, optics and biocatalysis.Many biological fibre forming systems are known based on carbohydrates and proteins e.g. bacterial cellulose or dextran and protein fibres such as collagen or poly-glutamate. In this PhD project we will use the properties of filamentous phages such as M13 which are long, 900 nm x 10 nm, naturally occurring molecules that self-assemble as they are secreted from E. coli. When M13 phage are concentrated they can further assemble together to form fibrous and liquid crystal domains. A cysteine containing phage will be used to build metal containing fibres and test these for electron transfer. We will use enzymes such as tyrosinase to functionalise surface tyrosines and transaminase to target lysine residues to enable cross-linking of phage with each other and with other filamentous proteins. Further functionalisation with enzymes arrayed on the surface will generate fibres with enzymic proerties that could be used in novel formats such as hybrid metal/enzyme catalysts.