Project Details
Projekt
Engineering adaptive Vibrio natriegens strains for bacteria-hybrid light-emitting diodes (ENABLED)
Subject Area
Biomaterials
Term
since 2024
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 541269829
Today's biological tunable lighting devices integrating living building blocks have been restricted to cells exploiting bio-chemiluminescence with a limited stability and luminous efficiency (i.e., a few days at luminous efficacies <5 lm/W). Indeed, there are no examples of living lighting devices using photon conversion schemes to manipulate light. We have recently developed a new methodology to prepare living color down-converting filters with Vibrio natriegens. This bacteria exhibits i) a promising potential for biotechnology with an extraordinarily rapid growth rate and substrate consumption rate, ii) reasonable success towards expressing highly high-quality fluorescent proteins (FPs), and iii) promising compatibility with matrices of high interest for lighting devices. Indeed, preliminary examples have shown devices with performances superior to those prepared with the same FPs in reference matrices. The current roadblocks are related to the lack of fundamental knowledge to i) successfully optimize the expression of arbitrary FPs, ii) to enhance resilience and compatibility in the matrices, ii) to introduce adaptability functions to external stimuli, and iii) to rationalize best device architectures and operation modes to maximize device performance. ENABLED project will answer all these open questions by merging metabolic engineering, synthetic biology tools, materials science, and bio-optoelectronics disciplines. Specifically, ENABLED will provide fundamental design rules to engineer V. natriegens with i) optimized arbitrary single- and dual-emission, ii) enhanced resilience in color down-converting filters to allow their recyclability after use in lighting devices, and iii) adaptability to temperature in color down-converting filter to allow their regeneration after use in lighting devices. This will allow us to set in a new family of rainbow and white bacteria-hybrid light-emitting diodes that are unknown up to date.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
