Three-dimensional printable enzymatically active plastics

DOI: 10.1021/acsapm.1c00845

Authors: William H. Zhang (University of Bristol) , Graham J. Day (University of Bristol) , Ioannis Zampetakis (University of Bristol) , Michele Carrabba (University of Bristol) , Zhongyang Zhang (Aarhus University) , Ben M. Carter (University of Bristol) , Norman Govan (Defence Science and Technology Laboratory) , Colin Jackson (Australian National University;) , Menglin Chen (Aarhus University) , Adam W. Perriman (University of Bristol)
Co-authored by industrial partner: No

Type: Journal Paper
Journal: Acs Applied Polymer Materials

State: Published (Approved)
Published: November 2021
Diamond Proposal Number(s): 17972 , 18006

Abstract: Here, we describe a facile route to the synthesis of enzymatically active highly fabricable plastics, where the enzyme is an intrinsic component of the material. This is facilitated by the formation of an electrostatically stabilized enzyme–polymer surfactant nanoconstruct, which, after lyophilization and melting, affords stable macromolecular dispersions in a wide range of organic solvents. A selection of plastics can then be co-dissolved in the dispersions, which provides a route to bespoke 3D enzyme plastic nanocomposite structures using a wide range of fabrication techniques, including melt electrowriting, casting, and piston-driven 3D printing. The resulting constructs comprising active phosphotriesterase (arPTE) readily detoxify organophosphates with persistent activity over repeated cycles and for long time periods. Moreover, we show that the protein guest molecules, such as arPTE or sfGFP, increase the compressive Young’s modulus of the plastics and that the identity of the biomolecule influences the nanomorphology and mechanical properties of the resulting materials. Overall, we demonstrate that these biologically active nanocomposite plastics are compatible with state-of-the-art 3D fabrication techniques and that the methodology could be readily applied to produce robust and on-demand smart nanomaterial structures.

Journal Keywords: nanocomposite; nanomorphology; functional bionanomaterials; enzyme; nanoconjugate; 3D printing; melt electrowriting

Diamond Keywords: Additive Manufacturing; Enymes; Plastics

Subject Areas: Biology and Bio-materials, Chemistry, Materials


Instruments: B23-Circular Dichroism , I22-Small angle scattering & Diffraction

Added On: 16/11/2021 20:54

Documents:
acsapm.1c00845.pdf

Discipline Tags:

Biomaterials Biochemistry Soft condensed matter physics Chemistry Materials Science Nanoscience/Nanotechnology Polymer Science Life Sciences & Biotech

Technical Tags:

Scattering Spectroscopy Wide Angle X-ray Scattering (WAXS) Circular Dichroism (CD)