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。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成生物产生的纤维材料。这些材料所获得的性质可以在诊断、光学和生物催化等方面有许多应用。许多生物纤维形成系统都是基于碳水化合物和蛋白质，如细菌纤维素或葡聚糖，以及蛋白质纤维，如胶原或聚谷氨酸。在这个PHD项目中，我们将使用丝状噬菌体的特性，例如M13，它长900 nm x 10 nm，是自然产生的分子，当它们从大肠杆菌分泌时会自我组装。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域和液晶域。含有半胱氨酸的噬菌体将被用来构建含有金属的纤维，并测试这些纤维的电子传递。我们将使用酪氨酸酶等酶来功能化表面酪氨酸，并使用转氨酶来靶向赖氨酸残基，以使噬菌体彼此之间以及与其他丝状蛋白发生交联。通过在表面排列酶的进一步功能化，将产生具有酶特性的纤维，这些纤维可以用于新的形式，如金属/酶复合催化剂。

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.