Experimental-Computational Design of Protein-Based Materials

Nature leverages the self-assembly propensity of structural proteins like elastin, resilin, collagen, or silk to generate sustainable functional materials with remarkable performance and that span a wide range of mechanical and structural properties: from soft to stiff, from porous to densely packed, from static to dynamic... This is inspiring scientists and engineers to use structural proteins as a sustainable replacement for fossil-based polymers in the manufacture of synthetic functional materials with applications in food, healthcare, adhesives, energy, textiles, or membrane technology, to name a few.<br/>Structural proteins are normally harvested from animal sources (e.g., silkworm cocoons, animal tissue), but these suffer from batch-to-batch variability, presence of contaminants, and cultural or religious concerns that limit their commercial use. Fortunately, developments in engineering biology allow us to overcome these issues and biofabricate non-animal-derived recombinant structural proteins. Furthermore, by carefully engineering their amino acid sequence, we can design entirely new structural proteins with properties inspired by natural structural proteins, but that do not exist in Nature, and use them to develop materials with e.g., adjustable mechanical properties, programmed functionalities, or the ability to adapt or respond to the environment.<br/>However, a complete framework that connects amino acid sequence to material properties is unavailable. Thus, <i>de novo</i> recombinant structural proteins are normally developed through low-throughput trial-and-error experimentation, which impedes rapid prototyping. In this talk, we will showcase our work on the combination of computational and experimental tools to accelerate the exploration of the design space of structural proteins. Specifically, we will present examples of how this approach has aided us in the design of new protein-based materials including flexible conductive films, biomineralizing films, or injectable stimuli-responsive hydrogels.