Bacterial cellulose spheroids as building blocks for 3D and patterned living materials and for regeneration.

ABSTRACT: Engineered living materials (ELMs) based on bacterial cellulose (BC) offer a promising avenue for cheap-to-produce materials that can be programmed with genetically encoded functionalities. Here we explore how ELMs can be fabricated in a modular fashion from millimetre-scale biofilm spheroids grown from shaking cultures of Komagataeibacter rhaeticus. Here we define a reproducible protocol to produce BC spheroids with the high yield bacterial cellulose producer K. rhaeticus and demonstrate for the first time their potential for their use as building blocks to grow ELMs in 3D shapes. Using genetically engineered K. rhaeticus, we produce functionalized BC spheroids and use these to make and grow patterned BC-based ELMs that signal within a material and can sense and report on chemical inputs.

SUBMITTER: Caro-Astorga J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8377073 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature