Secretion-Catalyzed Assembly of Protein Biomaterials on a Bacterial Membrane Surface.

ABSTRACT: Protein-based biomaterials have played a key role in tissue engineering, and additional exciting applications as self-healing materials and sustainable polymers are emerging. Over the past few decades, recombinant expression and production of various fibrous proteins from microbes have been demonstrated; however, the resulting proteins typically must then be purified and processed by humans to form usable fibers and materials. Here, we show that the Gram-positive bacterium Bacillus subtilis can be programmed to secrete silk through its translocon via an orthogonal signal peptide/peptidase pair. Surprisingly, we discover that this translocation mechanism drives the silk proteins to assemble into fibers spontaneously on the cell surface, in a process we call secretion-catalyzed assembly (SCA

SUBMITTER: Xie Q 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11619767 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature