Living Fabrications by the Engineered Bacteria

A key focus of synthetic biology is to utilize modular biological building blocks to assemble the cell-based circuits. Scientists have programmed the living organisms using these circuits to attain multiple delicate and well-defined functions. With the integration of tools or technologies from other disciplines, these rewired cells can achieve even more complex tasks. In this talk, we will present our recent work in versatile biomanufacturing of biologics and functional material fabrication by integrating the engineered cells and polymer physics and chemistry. By exploiting cell-material feedback, we are able to design a concise platform to achieve versatile production, analysis, and purification of diverse proteins and protein complexes, and also assembly of functional living materials. Our work demonstrates the use of the feedback between living cells and materials to engineer a modular and flexible platform with sophisticated yet well-defined programmed functions.