(596a) Isolation of Peptidoglycan from Hyperthemophillic Microorganisms for New Bioinspired Water-Responsive Materials

Due to their water-responsive actuation, the spores of Bacillus bacteria have been used as building blocks for stimuli-responsive materials and nanogenerators. It has been hypothesized that the microbial cell wall polymer peptidoglycan inside spores can dominate the spores’ powerful water-responsive behavior. Consequently, peptidoglycan has been recognized as a promising biomolecular source material for use as a component in bioinspired water-responsive energy transducing devices. The structure variations of peptidoglycan vary widely, however, thus far, only a limited number of these subtypes of this highly complex polymer have been investigated as biomolecular materials, and none to our knowledge from microbes considered to be extremophiles such as hyperthermophiles (T > 80ºC).

In this research we have cultivated the hyperthermophile Thermotoga maritima ATCC 43589 and isolated the biomolecular material peptidoglycan from this organism. We studied its water-responsive strain, response speed, and energy densities by using the atomic force microscope (AFM) that we previously customized for this purpose. This data was compared the extracted material with those from commercially available sources and also with our previous work with B. subtilus. In further studies we have used the biosynthetic uptake of fluorescent D-amino acids to label and characterize the 3D structure of fluorescent peptidoglycan using AIRYSCAN superresolution microscopy. We conclude that we can scale up the production of this novel, labeled biomaterial to appropriate levels for further use in water-reponsive devices and materials. We hypothesize that cell wall adaptations in the peptidoglycan due to the challenging microenvironmental conditions of the hyperthermophile could result in biomolecular materials with more advantageous water-responsive actuation properties.