Imperial College London
Portrait Picture

Tom Ellis

Faculty of Engineering, Department of Bioengineering

Professor of Synthetic Genome Engineering
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 7615t.ellis Website CV

 
 
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Location

 

704Bessemer BuildingSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@unpublished{Gilbert:2019:10.1101/2019.12.20.882472,
author = {Gilbert, C and Tang, T-C and Ott, W and Dorr, BA and Shaw, WM and Sun, GL and Lu, TK and Ellis, T},
doi = {10.1101/2019.12.20.882472},
title = {Living materials with programmable functionalities grown from engineered microbial co-cultures},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2019.12.20.882472},
year = {2019}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - UNPB
AB  - <jats:title>ABSTRACT</jats:title><jats:p>Biological systems assemble tissues and structures with advanced properties in ways that cannot be achieved by man-made materials. Living materials self-assemble under mild conditions, are autonomously patterned, can self-repair and sense and respond to their environment. Inspired by this, the field of engineered living materials (ELMs) aims to use genetically-engineered organisms to generate novel materials. Bacterial cellulose (BC) is a biological material with impressive physical properties and low cost of production that is an attractive substrate for ELMs. Inspired by how plants build materials from tissues with specialist cells we here developed a system for making novel BC-based ELMs by addition of engineered yeast programmed to add functional traits to a cellulose matrix. This is achieved via a synthetic ‘symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast’ (Syn-SCOBY) approach that uses a stable co-culture of<jats:italic>Saccharomyces cerevisiae</jats:italic>with BC-producing<jats:italic>Komagataeibacter rhaeticus</jats:italic>bacetria. Our Syn-SCOBY approach allows inoculation of engineered cells into simple growth media, and under mild conditions materials self-assemble with genetically-programmable functional properties in days. We show that co-cultured yeast can be engineered to secrete enzymes into BC, generating autonomously grown catalytic materials and enabling DNA-encoded modification of BC bulk material properties. We further developed a method for incorporating<jats:italic>S. cerevisiae</jats:italic>within the growing cellulose matrix, creating living materials that can sense chemical and optical inputs. This enabled growth of living sensor materials that can detect and respond to environmental pollutants, as well as living films that grow images based on projected patterns. This novel and robust Syn-SCOBY system empowers the sustainable production of B
AU  - Gilbert,C
AU  - Tang,T-C
AU  - Ott,W
AU  - Dorr,BA
AU  - Shaw,WM
AU  - Sun,GL
AU  - Lu,TK
AU  - Ellis,T
DO  - 10.1101/2019.12.20.882472
PY  - 2019///
TI  - Living materials with programmable functionalities grown from engineered microbial co-cultures
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2019.12.20.882472
ER  -
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