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Motility and chemotaxis of bacteria-driven microswimmers fabricated using antigen 43-mediated biotin display

2018

Article

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Bacteria-driven biohybrid microswimmers (bacteriabots) combine synthetic cargo with motile living bacteria that enable propulsion and steering. Although fabrication and potential use of such bacteriabots have attracted much attention, existing methods of fabrication require an extensive sample preparation that can drastically decrease the viability and motility of bacteria. Moreover, chemotactic behavior of bacteriabots in a liquid medium with chemical gradients has remained largely unclear. To overcome these shortcomings, we designed Escherichia coli to autonomously display biotin on its cell surface via the engineered autotransporter antigen 43 and thus to bind streptavidin-coated cargo. We show that the cargo attachment to these bacteria is greatly enhanced by motility and occurs predominantly at the cell poles, which is greatly beneficial for the fabrication of motile bacteriabots. We further performed a systemic study to understand and optimize the ability of these bacteriabots to follow chemical gradients. We demonstrate that the chemotaxis of bacteriabots is primarily limited by the cargo-dependent reduction of swimming speed and show that the fabrication of bacteriabots using elongated E. coli cells can be used to overcome this limitation.

Author(s): Schauer, Oliver and Mostaghaci, Babak and Colin, Remy and Hürtgen, Daniel and Kraus, David and Sitti, Metin and Sourjik, Victor
Journal: Scientific Reports
Volume: 8
Number (issue): 1
Pages: 9801
Year: 2018
Month: June
Day: 28
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group

Department(s): Physical Intelligence
Research Project(s): Bacteria-powered biohybrid microswimmers
Bibtex Type: Article (article)
Paper Type: Journal

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-28102-9
URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-28102-9

BibTex

@article{schauer2018motility,
  title = {Motility and chemotaxis of bacteria-driven microswimmers fabricated using antigen 43-mediated biotin display},
  author = {Schauer, Oliver and Mostaghaci, Babak and Colin, Remy and H{\"u}rtgen, Daniel and Kraus, David and Sitti, Metin and Sourjik, Victor},
  journal = {Scientific Reports},
  volume = {8},
  number = {1},
  pages = {9801},
  publisher = {Nature Publishing Group},
  month = jun,
  year = {2018},
  doi = {10.1038/s41598-018-28102-9},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-28102-9},
  month_numeric = {6}
}