Full-colour Jabuticaba-like nanostructures via the multiplex and orthogonal self-assembly of protein-conjugated
Zhengtao Deng1,2, Allen Y Chen1, Bijan Zakeri1
1Research Laboratory of Electronics, Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, Department of Biological Engineering, MIT Synthetic Biology Center, Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. timlu@mit.edu.
Abstract:
The integration of inorganic components with bacterial biofilms is of great significance for expanding the functionality of artificial biological materials. However, so far, the complexities and functionalities of biofilm-based scaffolds assembled via metal-peptide coordination chemistries remain limited. Here, we present a platform for the multiplexed and specific coupling of recombinant protein-functionalized fluorescent red-green-blue (RGB) quantum dots (QDs) with engineered biofilms to form Jabuticaba-like nanostructures. Full-color living Jabuticaba-like nanostructures have been achieved through the interaction of extracellular peptides that are fabricated by biofilms with the proteins that modify the surface of the RGB QDs through orthogonal SpyTag/SpyCatcher, IsopeptagN/PilinN, and IsopeptagC/PilinC pairs. We envision that living cell populations will enable the multiplexable, scalable and bottom-up assembly of versatile materials that integrate both abiotic and biotic components into multifunctional systems.
