Li Ke, Wei Zhen, Jia Jianyao, Xu Qing, Liu Hao, Zhong Chao, Huang He
School of Food Science and Pharmaceutical Engineering, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, 211816, China.
MOE Key Laboratory of Industrial Fermentation Microbiology, College of Biotechnology, Tianjin University of Science & Technology, Tianjin, 300457, China.
Mater Today Bio. 2023 Jan 14;19:100545. doi: 10.1016/j.mtbio.2023.100545. eCollection 2023 Apr.
The development of engineered living materials (ELMs) has recently attracted significant attention from researchers across multiple disciplines. Fungi-derived ELMs represent a new type of macroscale, cost-effective, environmentally sustainable materials. However, current fungi-based ELMs either have to undergo a final process to heat-kill the living cells or rely on the co-culture with a model organism for functional modification, which hinders the engineerability and versatility of these materials. In this study, we report a new type of ELMs - grown from programmable mycelial pellets - by a simple filtration step under ambient conditions. We demonstrate that pellets can provide sufficient cohesion to maintain large-area self-supporting structures even under low pH conditions. Subsequently, by tuning the inducible expression of genes involved in melanin biosynthesis, we verified the fabrication of self-supporting living membrane materials with tunable colors in response to xylose concentration in the surroundings, which can be further explored as a potential biosensor for detecting xylose level in industrial wastewater. Notably, the living materials remain alive, self-regenerative, and functional even after 3-month storage. Thus, beyond reporting a new engineerable fungi chassis for constructing ELMs, our study provides new opportunities for developing bulk living materials for real-world applications such as the production of fabrics, packaging materials, and biosensors.
工程化活材料（ELMs）的发展最近引起了多个学科研究人员的极大关注。真菌衍生的ELMs是一种新型的宏观规模、经济高效、环境可持续的材料。然而，目前基于真菌的ELMs要么必须经过最终的热灭活活细胞过程，要么依赖与模式生物共培养进行功能修饰，这阻碍了这些材料的可工程性和多功能性。在本研究中，我们报告了一种新型的ELMs——由可编程菌丝球生长而成——通过在环境条件下的简单过滤步骤。我们证明，即使在低pH条件下，菌丝球也能提供足够的凝聚力来维持大面积的自支撑结构。随后，通过调节参与黑色素生物合成的基因的诱导表达，我们验证了能够根据周围环境中木糖浓度制造颜色可调的自支撑活性膜材料，这种材料可进一步探索作为检测工业废水中木糖水平的潜在生物传感器。值得注意的是，即使经过3个月的储存，这些活材料仍保持存活、自我再生和功能。因此，除了报告一种用于构建ELMs的新型可工程化真菌底盘外，我们的研究还为开发用于实际应用的块状活材料提供了新机会，如织物、包装材料和生物传感器的生产。
