Ceramic Living Fibers by Electrospinning

工程活性材料（ELMs）被认为是材料科学和工程领域最相关的当代革命之一。ELM的目标是超越目前的“智能”，活性或多功能材料的例子，因此，使无数的工业和社会应用，其中“活”材料提高自主性，智能反应，自我修复，甚至自我复制。目前大多数ELM主要由自产的聚合物制成，无论是蛋白质还是多糖，其机械性能通常较差，限制了其在几种高性能工程解决方案中的使用。Cera-LiFE项目首次旨在开发工程活性陶瓷纤维，这是一种新型的ELMs，其机械性能优于当前生物ELMs。Cera-LiFE的一般概念包括纤维内尿素分解细菌的静电纺丝辅助包封，其中细菌驱动的生物矿化将纤维转化为活的陶瓷纤维。在DFG Nachwuchsakademie“工程生活材料”框架下，Cera-LiFE确定了成功执行项目的以下目标：（i）在静电纺丝纤维内成功展示尿素分解细菌，其含有生物矿化的必需化学成分，并且还促进具有高细胞负载的长细胞活力，和（ii）表征纤维的渐进生物矿化并展示活性陶瓷纤维的高机械性能。该项目的结果将作为未来DFG提案的基础，该提案将进一步探索活性陶瓷纤维的基础和应用方面。

Engineered living materials (ELMs) are considered among the most relevant contemporary revolutions in materials science and engineering. ELMs aim to outperform current examples of “smart,” active, or multifunctional materials and, hence, enable countless industrial and societal applications in which the “alive” materials improve autonomy, intelligent responses, self-repair, and even self-replication. Most of the current ELMs are primarily made of self-produced polymers, either proteins or polysaccharides, which often suffer from poor mechanical properties, restricting their use in several high-performance engineering solutions. The Cera-LiFE project, for the first time, aims to develop engineered living ceramic fibers, a novel class of ELMs, that can outperform the mechanical properties of current biological ELMs. The general concept of Cera-LiFE includes electrospinning-assisted encapsulation of ureolytic bacteria within fibers, where the bacteria-driven biomineralization will transform the fibers into living ceramic fibers. Under the DFG Nachwuchsakademie "Engineered Living Materials" framework, Cera-LiFE identifies the following objectives for the successful execution of the project: (i) successful demonstration of ureolytic bacteria within electrospun fibers, which contain essential chemical ingredients for biomineralization and yet facilitate long cell viability with high cell loading, and (ii) characterize the progressive biomineralization of the fibers and demonstrate the high mechanical performances of the living ceramic fibers. The project results will serve as the foundation of a future DFG proposal which will explore further fundamental and applied aspects of living ceramic fibers.