Abstract
The use of bacteria as catalysts for radical polymerisations of synthetic monomers has recently been established. However, the role of trans Plasma Membrane Electron Transport (tPMET) in modulating these processes is not well understood. We sort to study this by genetic engineering a part of the tPMET system NapC in E. coli. We show that this engineering altered the rate of extracellular electron transfer coincided with an effect on cell-mediated polymerisation using a model monomer. A plasmid with arabinose inducible PBAD promoters were shown to upregulate NapC protein upon induction at total arabinose concentrations of 0.0018% and 0.18%. These clones (E. coli(IP_0.0018%) and E. coli(IP_0.18%), respectively) were used in iron-mediated atom transfer radical polymerisation (Fe ATRP), affecting the nature of the polymerisation, than cultures containing suppressed or empty plasmids (E. coli(IP_S) and E. coli(E), respectively). These results lead to the hypothesis that EET (Extracellular Electron Transfer) in part modulates cell instructed polymerisations.
Highlights
Electron transfer plays a fundamental role in modulating biology, enabling almost all cellular functions.[1]
It has recently been shown that electron transfer via trans Plasma Membrane Electron Transport (tPMET) can be used to synthesise biopolymers and may have a role in radical polymerisations of synthetic monomers.[4,5,6,7,8]
We began by cloning napC gene isolated from E. coli into the plasmid pMTL83153, immediately downstream from the non-constitutive inducible promoter (PBAD)
Summary
Electron transfer plays a fundamental role in modulating biology, enabling almost all cellular functions.[1]. The fabrication of in situ generated biopolymers via microbes, opens new strategies for interfacing cells with new materials and may nd applications controlling cell behaviour and connecting cellular bioelectrical relays and improving application in microbial fuel cells.[8,9,10,11,12] To date the underlying cellular redox systems that modulate polymerisation have not been
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