TY - JOUR
T1 - Soft hydrogel-shell confinement systems as bacteria-based bioactuators and biosensors
AU - Jeong, Yoon
AU - Kong, Wentao
AU - Lu, Ting
AU - Irudayaraj, Joseph
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2023/1/1
Y1 - 2023/1/1
N2 - Genetically engineered (GE) bacteria were utilized for developing functional systems upon confinement within a restricted space. Use of natural soft hydrogel such as alginate, gelatin, and agarose, have been investigated as promising approaches to design functional architectures. Nevertheless, a challenge is to develop functional microenvironments that support biofilm-like confinement in a relevant three-dimensional (3D) format for long-term studies. We demonstrate a natural soft hydrogel bioactuator based on alginate core-shell structures (0.25–2 mm core and 50–300 μm shell thickness) that enables 3D microbial colonization upon confinement with high cell density. Specially, our study evaluates the efficiency of bacteria-functional system by recapitulating various GE bacteria which can produce common reporter proteins, to demonstrate their actuator functions as well as dynamic pair-wise interactions. The structural design of the hydrogel can endure continued growth of various bacteria colonies within the confined space for over 10 days. The total amount of cellular biomass upon hydrogel-shell confinement was increased 5-fold compared to conventional techniques without hydrogel-shell. Furthermore, the enzymatic activity increased 3.8-fold and bioluminescence signal by 8-fold compared to the responses from conventional hydrogel systems. The conceptualized platform and our workflow represent a reliable strategy with core-shell structures to develop artificial hydrogel habitats as bacteria-based functional systems for bioactuation.
AB - Genetically engineered (GE) bacteria were utilized for developing functional systems upon confinement within a restricted space. Use of natural soft hydrogel such as alginate, gelatin, and agarose, have been investigated as promising approaches to design functional architectures. Nevertheless, a challenge is to develop functional microenvironments that support biofilm-like confinement in a relevant three-dimensional (3D) format for long-term studies. We demonstrate a natural soft hydrogel bioactuator based on alginate core-shell structures (0.25–2 mm core and 50–300 μm shell thickness) that enables 3D microbial colonization upon confinement with high cell density. Specially, our study evaluates the efficiency of bacteria-functional system by recapitulating various GE bacteria which can produce common reporter proteins, to demonstrate their actuator functions as well as dynamic pair-wise interactions. The structural design of the hydrogel can endure continued growth of various bacteria colonies within the confined space for over 10 days. The total amount of cellular biomass upon hydrogel-shell confinement was increased 5-fold compared to conventional techniques without hydrogel-shell. Furthermore, the enzymatic activity increased 3.8-fold and bioluminescence signal by 8-fold compared to the responses from conventional hydrogel systems. The conceptualized platform and our workflow represent a reliable strategy with core-shell structures to develop artificial hydrogel habitats as bacteria-based functional systems for bioactuation.
KW - Alginate hydrogel structures
KW - Core-shell architecture
KW - Genetically engineered bacteria
KW - Whole cell bioactuators
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U2 - 10.1016/j.bios.2022.114809
DO - 10.1016/j.bios.2022.114809
M3 - Article
C2 - 36274428
AN - SCOPUS:85140044908
SN - 0956-5663
VL - 219
JO - Biosensors and Bioelectronics
JF - Biosensors and Bioelectronics
M1 - 114809
ER -