Cell Surface Display of Mussel Inspired Catecholamine - the Application of Sticky Bacteria

Cell surface display is a technique to display peptides or proteins on the surface of gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria, fungi, or even mammalian cells by appropriately fusing them to surface anchoring motifs. [1,2]

Here, we present a sticky Escherichia coli which displayed catecholamine, a mussel-inspired adhesive moiety with catechol and amine functional group, on the cell surface using outer membrane protein W of E. coli as an anchoring motif. The catecholamine displayed cells exhibited rapid cohesion between cells to form cellular aggregates and gold nanoparticles were reduced on the cell surface when incubated with gold solution.[3] As an application, enantioselective resolution, robust adhesion between the engineered cells and various substrates, and adsorption of heavy metals were observed. Sticky E. coli displaying mussel-inspired catecholamine reported here can be a versatile platform microbe for various emerging fields such as whole living cell attachment on versatile material surfaces, cell-to-cell communication systems, and many others.

[1] Lee, S. Y.; Choi, J. H.; Xu Z., J. Trends Biotechnol. 2003, 21, 45Ë—52.

[2] Han, M. J., Lee, S. H., FEMS Microbiol. Lett. 2014, 362, 1Ë—7.

[3] Park, J. P., Choi, M. J., Kim, S. H., Lee, S. H., Lee, H., Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 2014, 80, 43Ë—53.