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Updated: Oct 4, 2025

Synthesis of Information-bearing Peptoids and their Sequence-directed Dynamic Covalent Self-assembly

Synthesis of Information-bearing Peptoids and their Sequence-directed Dynamic Covalent Self-assembly

Published on: February 6, 2020

Protein nanowires with tunable functionality and programmable self-assembly using sequence-controlled synthesis.

Daniel Mark Shapiro^1,2,3,4, Gunasheil Mandava^3,4, Sibel Ebru Yalcin^3,4

¹Department of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 06520, USA.

Nature Communications

|February 12, 2022

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Researchers engineered highly conductive protein nanowires using synthetic biology. By genetically modifying bacteria, they created programmable protein materials with tunable electronic properties for advanced biomaterials.

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Area of Science:

Synthetic Biology
Biomaterials Science
Nanotechnology

Background:

Synthetic biology enables precise genetic encoding of novel chemistries for programmable protein synthesis.
Bacterial pili are mechanically robust self-assembling protein filaments, but typically lack electronic functionality.
Existing biomaterials often lack inherent electronic conductivity and defined atomic structures for conductive proteins.

Purpose of the Study:

To engineer high electronic conductivity in bacterial pili using a genomically-recoded *E. coli* strain.
To explore methods for enhancing conductivity through amino acid incorporation, structural ordering, and nanoparticle conjugation.
To demonstrate the production of sequence-defined, highly conductive protein nanowires with programmable electronic functionalities.

Main Methods:

Genomic recoding of *E. coli* to incorporate synthetic amino acids, specifically tryptophan and propargyloxy-phenylalanine.
Engineering pili with increased tryptophan content to enhance intrinsic conductivity.
Computationally guided assembly of pili into ordered nanostructures.
Site-specific conjugation of pili with gold nanoparticles.

Main Results:

Incorporation of tryptophan into pili increased filament conductivity over 80-fold.
Computationally guided ordering of pili into nanostructures enhanced conductivity 5-fold compared to unordered networks.
Conjugation with gold nanoparticles, enabled by propargyloxy-phenylalanine, increased filament conductivity approximately 170-fold.
Achieved sequence-defined production of highly conductive protein nanowires.

Conclusions:

Genetically programmable protein nanowires with significantly enhanced electronic conductivity can be produced.
Hybrid organic-inorganic biomaterials with tunable electronic functionalities are achievable through synthetic biology approaches.
This work opens avenues for novel electronic and biomaterial applications leveraging engineered protein conductivity.