Retrievable hydrogel networks with confined microalgae for efficient antibiotic degradation and enhanced stress tolerance
Minwen Jiang, Jie Zheng, Yi Tang, Hai Liu, Yawen Yao, Jianfei Zhou, Wei Lin, Yuan Ma, Jin Liu, Jiajing Zhou, Jiajing Zhou, Jiajing Zhou
Abstract
Antibiotic contamination has emerged as a global challenge, increasing antibiotic resistance and threatening human health and ecosystems. Bioremediation using microorganism offers sustainable methods to degrade such pharmaceutical contaminants. However, these microorganisms exhibit reduced activity under high-stress conditions, and are difficult to recycle and potentially leak into environment as microbial pollutions. Here we report bioprinted retrievable microalgae hydrogel networks (MHNs) by confining living microalgae in double-network hydrogels, which achieves enhanced antibiotic degradation (>99.3%) and recyclable ability. Particularly, coating MHN with tannic acid (MHN@TA) generates a semipermeable membrane to prevent the leakage of microalgae (<0.7% for 7 days), ensuring the containment of potential microbial biohazards. The biohybrid system protects the biological activity of microalgae, enabling antibiotic degradation up to 400 mg L−1. Free-standing MHN@TA fencing systems are also manufactured to demonstrate their practical applications. This study provides insights of microalgae-material interactions in bioremediation and offers design rationales for biohybrid systems. Antibiotic contamination has become a global challenge. Here, authors develop a retrievable and recyclable microalgae hydrogel network system, which can achieve efficient degradation of antibiotics over a wide range of concentrations.