Manmade high-performance polymers are typically non-biodegradable and derived from petroleum feedstock through energy intensive processes involving toxic solvents and byproducts. Nature has evolved a wide range of high-performance protein-based materials, even outperform the best available petroleum-based alternatives. However, their natural biosynthetic processes are often impossible to harness for scalable production as they are produced in limited quantity by slow growing organisms. Engineering microbes to produce these high-performance materials could provide an attractive solution, but face multiple technical challenges. In this talk, I will introduce our recent work in developing a synthetic biology approach to microbially produce megadalton muscle titin polymers. To biosynthesize ultra-high molecular weight (UHMW) titin protein, we engineered bacteria to perform polymerization reactions in living cells using folded proteins as monomers. The resulting UHMW titin polymers were spun to fibers that not only recapture highly desirable properties of natural titin (i.e., high damping capacity and mechanical recovery) but also exhibit exceptionally high strength, toughness, and damping energy — outperforming many synthetic and natural polymers. Structural analyses and molecular modeling suggest these properties derive from unique inter-chain crystallization of folded immunoglobulin-like domains that resists inter-chain slippage while permitting intra-chain unfolding. These fibers have potential applications in areas from biomedicine to textiles, and the developed approach, coupled with the structure-function insights, promises to accelerate further innovation in microbial production of high-performance materials.

Microbial production of high-performance muscle fibers via synthetic biology

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.