ABSTRACT

Nontechnical:

This award by the Biomaterials Program in the Division of Materials Research, co-funded by the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems, to Massachusetts Institute of Technology is for the development of new class of sustainable materials that are grown using bacteria to have enhanced structure and properties. More specifically, this research program proposes to gain unprecedented control and enhancement of the multiscale design of a technologically important living material system, bacterial cellulose, which has great potential for use as textiles, drug delivery devices, tissue engineering scaffolds, and sustainable building components. This research will enable simultaneous tuning of the material (structure and properties) and macroscopic 3D shape of this biopolymer. An interdisciplinary approach will be taken involving synthetic biology and genetic engineering, in-situ extracellular and materials processing, algorithmic design methods from the field of architecture, as well as powerful new additive manufacturing fabrication (3D printing with micron-scale spatial resolution). This study combines three disciplines - synthetic biology, materials science, and architectural design and has a broader impact contribution for all three. For synthetic biology, foundational methodologies are created that could be extended to any biological polymer (e.g. protein block co-polymers, cellulose, amyloids, etc.). For architectural design, the opportunity to apply methods of algorithmic design and additive manufacturing to living matter is novel and opens up new questions about possibilities of design in interaction with biological growth and material formation to produce sustainable and environmentally responsive materials and building components from renewable resources. For materials science, the project suggests systematic study of combination of material structure, properties and morphometry as a way to design materials and further enhance their function and performance with specific functionalization through synthetic gene networks regulated by external stimuli. Participation in these projects will educate students to cross disciplinary boundaries and work across scales of resolution to develop sustainable design manufacturing techniques for microbial production. Additional educational activities for this study include Independent Activity Period (IAP) interdisciplinary class at MIT "Designing Shape, Material, and Life", instruction in the worldwide synthetic biology competition for undergraduate and high school students iGEM (International Genetic Engineering Machine), and science exhibitions, such as MIT Museum and Cambridge Science Fair. Lastly, mentoring of summer students via undergraduate research programs at MIT will be carried out.


Technical:

This research program proposes to control and tune the material (structure and properties) and macroscopic morphometry (3D shape) of a technologically important model system (bacterial cellulose), which has potential for use as textiles, drug delivery devices, tissue engineering scaffolds, and sustainable building components. An interdisciplinary approach is taken involving synthetic biology and genetic engineering, in-situ extracellular and materials processing, algorithmic design methods from the field of architecture, as well as powerful new additive manufacturing fabrication (3D printing with micron-scale spatial resolution). The first aim of this research is to modulate the structure and properties of cellulose as it is synthesized by the bacteria Gluconacetobacter xylinus via the use of UV lithography regulation and synthetic biological networks encoding fusion proteins production. Secondly, the role of the in situ extracellular physicochemical environmental conditions and perturbations on the structure and properties of bacterial cellulose will be investigated. The resulting macromolecular structure and properties of the produced cellulose will be assessed by cross-polarized optical, electron and atomic-force microscopy, X-ray diffraction, nuclear magnetic resonance, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, multi-directional mechanical testing, and nanoindentation. Lastly, algorithmic design and 3D printing will be utilized to fabricate increasingly complex macroscopic structures with tunable geometric parameters of molds which are subsequently used to cast polydimethylsiloxane substrates for in situ culture and growth of genetically engineered bacterial cellulose.

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