Tadimarri Varun Sai, Sankaran Shrikrishnan
INM-Leibniz Institute for New Materials, Saarbrücken, Germany.
Methods Mol Biol. 2025;2840:101-114. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-4047-0_8.
Engineered living materials (ELM) is a new frontier in materials research that uses living microorganisms to augment nonliving materials with lifelike capabilities, such as responding to external stimuli. This is achieved by genetically programming the microorganisms in an ELM with stimulus-sensing modules. A popular stimulus to remotely control various ELM functions is light, which has been realized thanks to optogenetics. This chapter describes methods to create a simple ELM capable of sensing light and responding to it by producing and releasing a drug. The material component of the ELM will be a Pluronic F127-based hydrogel and the living component will be optogenetically engineered bacteria. Such ELMs are being developed to create smart therapeutic solutions for challenging chronic diseases and variations in the design to improve performance and safety will be mentioned.
工程化活材料（ELM）是材料研究的一个新前沿领域，它利用活微生物赋予无生命材料逼真的能力，比如对外部刺激作出反应。这是通过对工程化活材料中的微生物进行基因编程，使其具备刺激感应模块来实现的。一种用于远程控制各种工程化活材料功能的常见刺激因素是光，这要归功于光遗传学才得以实现。本章介绍了创建一种简单的工程化活材料的方法，该材料能够感知光并通过产生和释放药物对其作出反应。工程化活材料的材料成分将是基于普朗尼克F127的水凝胶，而活成分将是经过光遗传学改造的细菌。此类工程化活材料正在被开发用于为具有挑战性的慢性病创建智能治疗方案，并且还将提及为提高性能和安全性而对设计进行的改进。
