{"id":94558,"date":"2021-09-07T07:29:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-07T05:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=94558"},"modified":"2021-09-02T12:58:29","modified_gmt":"2021-09-02T10:58:29","slug":"synthetic-biology-enables-microbes-to-build-synthetic-muscle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/synthetic-biology-enables-microbes-to-build-synthetic-muscle\/","title":{"rendered":"Synthetic biology enables microbes to build synthetic muscle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"Researchers
Researchers at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis have developed a synthetic chemistry approach to polymerize proteins inside of engineered microbes. Image: Fuzhong Zhang Lab<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Would you wear clothing made of muscle fibers? Use them to tie your shoes or even wear them as a belt? It may sound a bit odd, but if those fibers could endure more energy before breaking than cotton, silk, nylon, or even Kevlar, then why not?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t worry, this muscle could be produced without harming a single animal.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researchers at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis have developed a synthetic chemistry approach to polymerize proteins inside of engineered microbes. This enabled the microbes to produce the high molecular weight muscle protein, titin, which was then spun into fibers.\u00a0Their research was published Aug. 30 in the journal\u00a0Nature Communications<\/em><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also: \u201cIts production can be cheap and scalable. It may enable many applications that people had previously thought about, but with natural muscle fibers,\u201d said Fuzhong Zhang<\/a>, professor in the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering. Now, these applications may come to fruition without the need for actual animal tissues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Headshot
Zhang<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The synthetic muscle protein produced in Zhang\u2019s lab is titin, one of the three major protein components of muscle tissue. Critical to its mechanical properties is the large molecular size of titin. \u201cIt\u2019s the largest known protein in nature,\u201d said Cameron Sargent, a PhD student in the Division of Biological and Biomedical Sciences and a first author on the paper along with Christopher Bowen, a recent PhD graduate of the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Muscle fibers have been of interest for a long time, Zhang said. Researchers have been trying to design materials with similar properties to muscles for various applications, such as in soft robotics. \u201cWe wondered, \u2018Why don\u2019t we just directly make synthetic muscles?\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cBut we\u2019re not going to harvest them from animals \u2014 we\u2019ll use microbes to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To circumvent some of the issues that typically prevent bacteria from producing large proteins, the research team engineered bacteria to piece together smaller segments of the protein into ultra-high molecular weight polymers around two megadaltons in size \u2014 about 50 times the size of an average bacterial protein. They then used a wet-spinning process to convert the proteins into fibers that were around 10 microns in diameter, or a tenth the thickness of human hair. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Working with collaborators Young Shin Jun<\/a>, professor in the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering, and Sinan Keten, professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University, the group then analyzed the structure of these fibers to identify the molecular mechanisms that enable their unique combination of exceptional toughness, strength and damping capacity, or the ability to dissipate mechanical energy as heat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside from fancy clothes or protective armor (again, the fibers are tougher than Kevlar, the material used in bulletproof vests), Sargent pointed out that this material has many potential biomedical applications as well. Because it\u2019s nearly identical to the proteins found in muscle tissue, this synthetic material is presumably biocompatible and could therefore be a great material for sutures, tissue engineering and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zhang\u2019s research team doesn\u2019t intend to stop with synthetic muscle fiber. The future will likely hold more unique materials enabled by their microbial synthesis strategy. Working with Bowen, Sargent and Zhan, WashU has filed a patent application based on the research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe beauty of the system is that it\u2019s really a platform that can be applied anywhere,\u201d Sargent said. \u201cWe can take proteins from different natural contexts, then put them into this platform for polymerization and create larger, longer proteins for various material applications with a greater sustainability.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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About McKelvey Engineering<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis promotes independent inquiry and education with an emphasis on scientific excellence, innovation and collaboration without boundaries. McKelvey Engineering has top-ranked research and graduate programs across departments, particularly in biomedical engineering, environmental engineering and computing, and has one of the most selective undergraduate programs in the country. With 140 full-time faculty, 1,387 undergraduate students, 1,448 graduate students and 21,000 living alumni, we are working to solve some of society\u2019s greatest challenges; to prepare students to become leaders and innovate throughout their careers; and to be a catalyst of economic development for the St. Louis region and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research (N000141912126) and an Early Career Faculty grant from NASA\u2019s Space Technology Research Grants Program (NNX15AU45G).
Use of BioCARS was also supported by the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of General Medical Sciences (1R24GM111072).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Would you wear clothing made of muscle fibers? Use them to tie your shoes or even wear them as a belt? It may sound a bit odd, but if those fibers could endure more energy before breaking than cotton, silk, nylon, or even Kevlar, then why not? Don\u2019t worry, this muscle could be produced without […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"No animals required to produce these fibers, which are tougher than Kevlar","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[5838,12615,18972,12417],"supplier":[2227],"class_list":["post-94558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-bioeconomy","tag-microbes","tag-musclefibers","tag-proteins","supplier-washington-university-in-st-louis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94558\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94558"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=94558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}