Design of Digitally Controlled Bacterial Circuits for Bioenabled Materials

This proposal seeks to understand if bacteria can be designed to perform on demand when inside of a composite material. Bacteria provide a rich source that can be exploited to develop novel and cost-effective adaptive systems that could be superior to traditional materials. Critical to this concept is the ability to control bacterial activity inside materials. To explore this, we will test the hypothesis that if bacteria can be designed to respond to weak currents and survive in UV-activated polymers, then combining those bacteria with nanomaterials in a UV-activated polymer will create a material where the activity of embedded bacteria can be controlled using a computer interface. The hypothesis will be tested by engineering circuits in bacteria that are responsive to oxidation/reduction at the surface of nanowires. We will then use scalable assembly processes to combine bacteria and nanowires in mixed UV-activated polymers to create rigid/soft composite material. Composite bacterial nanowire materials will be interfaced with computer controllers to examine manipulation of bacterial activity in the composite materials.

Current participants: Additional participants:

Collaborators: UCSB Past participants: James Parkin (PhD student, BE)

Objectives

Description of the main objectives of the project

References

None to date

Agency: Army Research Lab/Institute for Collaborative Biotechnology Grant number:

Start date: 1 Oct 2019 End date: 30 Sep 2021

Support: 1 graduate student Reporting: Annual report