There have been numerous studies focusing on engineered living materials as they are able to response to external environment cues by designing diverse physical and chemical properties through incorporating different bioactive molecule expressions. Much work has been focused on how to engineer self-assembled material, but overlooked assembly structure. Dielectrophoresis has long been used to manipulate particle movements in biological and colloidal systems, mainly for cell sorting and crystal formation, because of its versatility on neutrally charge particles and non-invasive characteristic to cells. However, it has never been used to assemble cells directly into structured living material.

In this work, a method of creating patterned living material with desired shape and geometry was...[ Read more ]

There have been numerous studies focusing on engineered living materials as they are able to response to external environment cues by designing diverse physical and chemical properties through incorporating different bioactive molecule expressions. Much work has been focused on how to engineer self-assembled material, but overlooked assembly structure. Dielectrophoresis has long been used to manipulate particle movements in biological and colloidal systems, mainly for cell sorting and crystal formation, because of its versatility on neutrally charge particles and non-invasive characteristic to cells. However, it has never been used to assemble cells directly into structured living material.

In this work, a method of creating patterned living material with desired shape and geometry was achieved by first expressing protein conjugation pairs with super-strong interactions: SpyTag-SpyCatcher and CL7-Im7, and then assembled by dielectrophoresis to form a stable multi-cellular matrix. A silicon based platform was developed to assemble yeast cells and to verify the stability of the novel assembled living material. Other functional protein like superuranyl binding protein could be also displayed for uranyl sequestration. A flow-through device was proposed for continuous processing to enable practical assembly material application.