Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Sogang University, Seoul 04107, Republic of Korea.
Institute of Integrated Biotechnology, Sogang University, Seoul 04107, Republic of Korea.
ACS Nano. 2024 Apr 9;18(14):10045-10053. doi: 10.1021/acsnano.3c11776. Epub 2024 Mar 25.
Hybridization of microbial cells with inorganic nanoparticles that could dramatically improve cellular functions such as electron transfer has been realized by the random attachment or stochastic entry of the nanoparticles. Clearly, the selective growth of inorganic nanoparticles on target functional organelles is ideal for such hybridization. Here, we report the selective growth of gold nanocrystals in the intermembrane space (IMS) of by exploiting the electron transport chain (ETC). We systematically show that gold ions are permeated through porins in the outer membrane of and further reduced to gold nanocrystals by the ETC in live . We directly observe that the resulting gold nanocrystals exist only in the IMS by transmission electron microscopy measurements of cross-sectioned . Molecular dynamics simulations suggest that once gold ions are reduced to small nuclei by the ETC, the nuclei can be stably physisorbed onto ETC complexes, further supporting the ETC-mediated growth. Finally, we show that the ATP synthesis of where gold nanocrystals are formed in the IMS is up to 9 times higher than that of alone. We believe that our work can significantly contribute to not only improving microbial metabolic functions for biological energy conversion but also restoring physiological dysfunctions of microbial cells for biomedicine.
通过随机附着或随机进入，已经实现了微生物细胞与无机纳米粒子的杂交，这种纳米粒子可以显著改善细胞的电子转移等功能。显然，对于这种杂交，选择性地在目标功能细胞器上生长无机纳米粒子是理想的。在这里，我们通过利用电子传递链 (ETC) 报告了在 的膜间空间 (IMS) 中选择性生长金纳米晶体。我们系统地表明，金离子通过 的外膜中的孔蛋白渗透，并通过活 中的 ETC 进一步还原为金纳米晶体。我们通过对 的横截面进行透射电子显微镜测量直接观察到，所得的金纳米晶体仅存在于 IMS 中。分子动力学模拟表明，一旦金离子被 ETC 还原为小核，核就可以稳定地物理吸附到 ETC 复合物上，进一步支持 ETC 介导的生长。最后，我们表明，在 IMS 中形成金纳米晶体的 的 ATP 合成比单独的 高 9 倍。我们相信，我们的工作不仅可以显著提高微生物的代谢功能，用于生物能源转换，还可以恢复微生物细胞的生理功能障碍，用于生物医学。
