Team:Warwick/Description

Description

By providing a well-defined, biocompatible surface coating, the risk of bone and dental implant failure will be greatly reduced. In order to produce such coatings, light will have control over the spatial production of extra-cellular cellulose and formation of biofilm. The modified E.coli builds on work from previous iGEM teams, utilising a transmembrane protein complex: upon exposure to red light Cph8 prevents the phosphorylation of a promoter and begins the synthesis cascade. Using this technology, the team will be able to build a 3D printer where living bacteria act as the 'bio-ink'. They will then be able to produce biocompatible structures, featuring micrometre pores, which mimic the surface of broken bone for implants. Micropore structures have been shown to induce the body to produce new bone, helping the implant fuse efficiently and thus reduce overall failure rates.

For greater details of the mechanism behind the project see the Design page.

At the start of the Summer, whilst brainstorming our possible project ideas, we decided that we wanted to try and incorporate the expression of cellulose. As a natural biopolymer, it doesn't illicit an immune response and is almost completely resistant to both heat and mechanical stresses. We then weighed up the pros and cons of expressing the polysaccharide either intracellularly or extracellularly. We settled on extracellular expression, as this increased the chance of the cellulose produced by the different cells interacting and linking together to produce a more rigid material. With five engineers on the team, we wanted to design a project which utilized their skills and kept them busy in the workshop. With this in mind, we each set about finding an application which incorporated both biology and engineering. This led to the incorporation of our 3D biopolymer printer, which could then be used to produce surface coatings for medical implants.

We thank our sponsors without whom none of this would have been possible: