Abstract
Engineering dynamic systems or materials to respond to biological process is one of the major tasks in synthetic biology and will enable wide promising applications, such as robotics and smart medicine. Herein, a super‐soft and dynamic DNA/dopamine‐grafted‐dextran hydrogel, which shows super‐fast volume‐responsiveness with high sensitivity upon solvents with different polarities and enables creation of electric circuits in response to microbial metabolism is reported. Synergic permanent and dynamic double networks are integrated in this hydrogel. A serials of dynamic hydrogel‐based electric circuits are fabricated: 1) triggered by using water as switch, 2) triggered by using water and petroleum ether as switch pair, 3) a self‐healing electric circuit; 4) remarkably, a microbial metabolism process which produces ethanol triggering electric circuit is achieved successfully. It is envisioned that the work provides a new strategy for the construction of dynamic materials, particularly DNA‐based biomaterials; and the electric circuits will be highly promising in applications, such as soft robotics and intelligent systems.
Highlights
Engineering dynamic systems or materials to respond to biological process is Introduction one of the major tasks in synthetic biology and will enable wide promising applications, such as robotics and smart medicine
Dynamic hydrogels stimulated by specific stimuli or biological process have emerged as potential candidates for a wide range of applications, such as soft robots,[1,2] next-generation bioelectronics polarities and enables creation of electric circuits in response to microbial interfaces,[3,4] switchable catalysis,[5] and metabolism is reported
A serials of dynamic hydrogel-based electric circuits are fabricated: 1) triggered by using water as switch, 2) triggered by using water and petroleum ether as switch pair, 3) a self-healing electric circuit; 4) remarkably, a microbial metabolism process which produces terials have been used for the construction of dynamic hydrogels with reversible volume and shape changes, due to the presence of entropic elasticity of polymer chains.[7,8]
Summary
Scheme 1 describes the overall molecular design and synthesis route of DNA/DEX-g-DOPA hydrogel. As a demonstration of application, a microbial metabolism process which produced ethanol triggering electric circuit was achieved using DNA/DEX-g-DOPA hydrogel as dynamic wires (Scheme 1C). By virtue of the volumetric responsiveness of the hydrogel upon different solvents, the electric circuit that used water and MSO as the switch pair was fabricated, in which DNA/DEX-g-. The electric circuit switched by the water/MSO switch pair was fabricated successfully using the self-healing DNA/DEX-gDOPA hydrogel as dynamic wires. The current value was relatively stable and low, which was from the poor conductivity of the culture medium We emphasized that this is the first time to construct a dynamic electric circuit switched by a microbial metabolism process without human interventions, showing great potential for the remote and programmable control of the circuits. Was accelerated, indicating a controlled and enzyme-responsive drug release manner (Figure S17E, Supporting Information)
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