Design of microscopic polymer materials by droplet microfluidics and additive manufacturing for cell-free biotechnology

Datum

20.12.2018

Zeit

11:00 - 12:00

Sprecher

Julian Thiele

Zugehörigkeit

Leibniz-Institut für Polymerforschung Dresden e.V., Young Investigator at TU Dresden

Serie

MPI-CBG Thursday Seminar

Sprache

en

Hauptthema

Biologie

Andere Themen

Biologie

Host

Dora Tang

Beschreibung

The structural diversity of natural and synthetic macromolecular building blocks allows for designing polymer materials with tailored size, shape, porosity, degradability, stimuli-sensitivity and stiffness [1,2], which have thus evolved as promising experimental platform in cell biology and cell-free biotechnology [3]. However, to process macromolecular building blocks into well-defined polymer materials with feature sizes from 1 to 100 μm, and spatial control over physicochemical/mechanical properties on the same length scale requires innovative fabrication strategies. On this account, we utilize two methods: droplet microfluidics to fabricate polymer microgels swollen in water, and 3D-printing based on micro-stereolithography (μSL) to fabricate polymer materials with micron- scale precision in bulk [4]. Focusing on applications in cell-free biotechnology, we combine these methods to design experimental platforms for understanding and optimizing enzymatic cascade reactions in an artificial environment that still reflects key aspects of cellular life (e.g. diffusivity and spatiotemporal organization of reaction partners) [5]. For that, we immobilize enzymes in cell-sized microgels, whose polymer matrix is optimized regarding porosity and hydrophobicity to preserve enzyme conformation and activity. By loading these microgels into 3D-printed microbioreactors, we manipulate experimental conditions with spatiotemporal control within microseconds and micrometers, respectively (Figure 1). The combination of μSL and polymer material design by droplet microfluidics provides the means to control biochemical reactions in a tailored microenvironment with reduced energy consumption and undesired side reactions towards tailored pharmacologically and technically relevant proteins and enzymes.

Letztmalig verändert: 21.12.2018, 01:09:54