Chloe passed her A-exam and is now a doctoral candidate! Her research project endeavors to create extreme-tolerant engineered living materials by combining biopolymers with modified Dienococcus radiodurans cells. We’re all very excited to see what she creates!
Congratulations to Esther, Carlson, Bobby, Marimikel, and Alanna on their publication “Genetically Modifying the Protein Matrix of Macroscopic Living Materials to Control Their Structure and Rheological Properties” now out in the “Materials Design by Synthetic Biology” special Issue of ACS Synthetic Biology. This is Esther’s inaugural first author paper and demonstrates fine-grained genetic control over the microstructures and material properties of an engineered living material. Read the article here!
Our brilliant graduate students, Esther Jimenez and Robyn Alba, were celebrated at the Take the Cake Ceremony on November 20, 2024. This Rice University tradition was started in 2016 to celebrate the achievements of graduate students and postdocs who earned competitive external fellowships. Esther is an awardee of the National Science Foundation (NSF) INTERN program and Robyn won a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship!
Congratulations to Siliang and Matt for publishing “Microbial bioelectronic sensors for environmental monitoring” in Nature Reviews Bioengineering! They cover system design from the lens of chassis selection, electron transfer engineering, cell–electrode interfaces, and fabrication methods, and offer possible solutions for real-world sensing of complex contaminants. Read the article here.
We’re pleased to announce that the perspective article arising from the 2023 Engineered Living Materials Workshop is now live! Entitled “Unlocking the societal potential of engineered living materials,” this work shares insights and recommendations for moving the field of ELMs forward. Keep an eye out for the next ELM Workshop to be held in Spring 2025! Read the article here.
Congratulations for Robyn, Siliang, Biki, and Rong for their protocol publication entitled “Characterizing Mediated Extracellular Electron Transfer in Lactic Acid Bacteria with a Three-Electrode, Two-Chamber Bioelectrochemical System.” This mediated EET method is demonstrated using L. plantarum and DHNA. Check it out here.
Congratulations to our own Esther Jimenez for being awarded the NSF INTERN grant. She and fellow grad student Eric Wuestoff are the first to win this award at Rice U!
This grant enables Esther to embark upon an internship at Solugen with their enzyme evolution team. The CAF lab is very supportive of our students taking on career development opportunities such as this and are excited to hear what Esther learns! Read more here.
Dr. Rong Cai and Dr. Caroline Ajo-Franklin are guest editing a special issue of Sensors entitled Point-of-Care Biosensors: Design and Applications. They seek manuscript submissions on a wide range of research topics, including molecular sensing machinery, detection methods, and integration of both into miniature or wearable devices. The deadline for submission is December 25, 2024 and you can find out details here!
Congratulations to Biki Kundu and Esther Jimenez for their recent preprints on bioRxiv!
Esther induced substantial changes in the microstructure of our engineered living materials through relatively minor alterations to the sequence of the genome-encoded biopolymer. These sequence and structure alterations then propagated out to changes in rheological behavior. The insights gained will lead us closer to predictive design rules for ELMs. You can read “Genetically modifying the protein matrix of macroscopic living materials to control their structure and rheological properties” here.
In the next paper entitled “Extracellular Respiration is a Latent Energy Metabolism in Escherichia coli,” Biki reveals a new type of anaerobic energy metabolism in E. coli in which the cell uses HNQ for mediated electron transfer. When respiring on an anode, the strain demonstrated surprisingly robust anaerobic growth! This paper has it all: genome editing, metabolic modeling, transcriptomics, and electrochemistry. Read about it here.
Dr. Jayashree Soman just passed the impressive milestone of 30 years at Rice University! We are so lucky to have her as our lab manager not only for her ability to keep our lab humming along, but also for providing her experimental expertise and mentorship to our group. Thank you and cheers, Jayashree!
Congratulations to Robyn Alba for securing a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship! This prestigious award will support her study on extracellular electron transport and biosensors.