Engineering High-Yield Biopolymer Secretion Creates an Extracellular Protein Matrix for Living Materials
María Teresa Orozco-Hidalgo, Marimikel Charrier, Nicholas Tjahjono, Robert F. Tesoriero, Dong Li, Sara Molinari, Kathleen R. Ryan, Paul D. Ashby, Behzad Rad, Caroline M. Ajo‐Franklin
Abstract
Engineered living materials (ELM) aim to mimic characteristics of natural occurring systems, bringing the benefits of self-healing, synthesis, autonomous assembly, and responsiveness to traditional materials. Previous research has shown the potential of replicating the bacterial extracellular matrix (ECM) to mimic biofilms. However, these efforts require energy-intensive processing or have limited tunability. We propose a bacterially synthesized system that manipulates the protein content of the ECM, allowing for programmable interactions and autonomous material formation. To achieve this, we engineered a two-strain system to secrete a synthetic extracellular protein matrix (sEPM). This work is a step toward understanding the necessary parameters to engineering living cells to autonomously construct ELMs.