Shewanella oneidensis as a living electrode for controlled radical polymerization.

ABSTRACT: Metabolic engineering has facilitated the production of pharmaceuticals, fuels, and soft materials but is generally limited to optimizing well-defined metabolic pathways. We hypothesized that the reaction space available to metabolic engineering could be expanded by coupling extracellular electron transfer to the performance of an exogenous redox-active metal catalyst. Here we demonstrate that the electroactive bacterium Shewanella oneidensis can control the activity of a copper catalyst in atom-transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) via extracellular electron transfer. Using S. oneidensis, we achieved precise control over the molecular weight and polydispersity of a bioorthogonal polymer while similar organisms, such as Escherichia coli, showed no significant activity

SUBMITTER: Fan G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5939106 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature