Automated Synthesis of Engineered Living Functional Materials

Project Description

In the last two decades, with the advent of synthetic biology, living cells have been utilized to produce various chemicals, drugs, fragrances, and fuels. However, the synthetic biology design principles are rarely utilized to produce functional materials. On the other hand, biological materials like bone, skin etc. can self-replicate, self-heal, self-regulate and respond to external stimuli. These above characteristics have inspired several researchers to engineer living cells to produce de novo materials and to incorporate life-like properties, which has led to the emergence of a new field known as the Engineered Living Materials (ELMs). The goal of this project is to investigate the extent to which curli proteins can be genetically modified to produce the curli nanofiber-based functional ELMs. This project focuses on utilizing the state-of-the-art living biofoundry facility at the BioPACIFIC MIP-UCLA for automated synthesis of a large library of functional curli nanofibers and thereby enabling the biomanufacturing of smart materials with a wide variety of functional properties for the real world applications.

Instruments