SPP 2451:  Engineered Living Materials with Adaptive Functions

• Subject Area: Materials Science and Engineering ; Agriculture, Forestry and Veterinary Medicine ; Construction Engineering and Architecture ; Biology ; Chemistry ; Computer Science, Systems and Electrical Engineering ; Medicine ; Thermal Engineering/Process Engineering
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 521156679

In the SPP 2451, materials and biology engineers will work together to unfold the potential of the synergistic engineering of non-living and living components. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, this multidisciplinary community will contribute to (i) the fundamental understanding of the compositional, technical and safety requirements for a functional marriage of non-living materials with living components, and to (ii) the demonstration of the potential of adaptive ELMs to unify high-tech and sustainability requirements in future materials-based technologies in laboratory prototypes. The coordination project of the SPP will contribute to the networking, collaboration and visibility of the SPP topic and community through the organization of SPP meetings and conferences. It will also contribute to the organization of dedicated and specialized training and career development of 30 early career scientist at PhD and Postdoc level, and to tighten their network with peers and PIs in ELMs. The Coordination project will also address three ELM-specific topics of central relevance to the SPP community: (i) the establishment of documentation, reporting and data management standards that can facilitate FAIR data and data-driven ELM development in the SPP. (ii) promotion of the discussion on environmental safety aspects of the ELM to guide safe-by-design concepts for their responsible application in the future. (iii) The information on ELMs within and beyond the materials scientific community, to gain acceptance for safe ELM based technologies among the industry and the society. The SPP offers a timely opportunity to tackle these questions at the very early stage of development of the ELM community. This advantageous position will provide considerable visibility to the SPP and leverage its impact worldwide.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• International Connection: Canada

Projects

• Adaptive biomaterials through mechano-modulating bacteria (Applicants Blaeser, Andreas ;  Koeppl, Heinz )
• Adaptive capsule-based materials for programming engineered living systems (Applicants Cavalcanti-Adam, Elisabetta Ada ;  Jacobs, Karin ;  Selhuber-Unkel, Christine )
• Adaptive Engineered Bacterial Coacervates (Applicants Di Iorio, Ph.D., Daniele ;  Philipp, Bodo )
• Adaptive Living Seed Coatings (Applicants Pich, Andrij ;  Schwaneberg, Ph.D., Ulrich )
• Combining stimuli-responsive hydrogels and scaffold-supported microbial biofilms for a self-controlled catalytic activity of a microbial leaf (Applicants Karande, Rohan ;  Pompe, Tilo ;  Schulze, Agnes )
• ContainELMs – Material-centric genetic programming of biocontainment in engineered living materials (Applicants König, Meike ;  Sankaran, Shrikrishnan )
• Coordination Proposal SPP2451: Engineered Living Materials with Adaptive Functions (Applicant del Campo Bécares, Aránzazu )
• Engineered Living Actuators from Filamentous Cyanobacteria (Applicants Ionov, Leonid ;  Karpitschka, Stefan ;  Stark, Holger )
• Engineering adaptive Vibrio natriegens strains for bacteria-hybrid light-emitting diodes (ENABLED) (Applicants Blombach, Bastian ;  Costa, Rubén )
• Living electro-biocatalyst scaffolds for sensing and cleaning (Applicants Adrian, Lorenz ;  Altintas, Zeynep )
• Living Plasmonics: Distributed environmental sensing with photoluminescent sensor ELM through enzymatic coupling of bacterial sensing with nanoplasmonics (Applicants Kraus, Tobias ;  Weber, Wilfried )
• Living Therapeutic Materials with long term, sonoresponsive and mechanoadaptive function (Applicants del Campo Bécares, Aránzazu ;  Herrmann, Andreas )
• ProbioGel as Adaptive Living Skin and Wound Therapeutics (Applicants Heine, Elisabeth ;  De Laporte, Laura )
• Self-synthesizing, self-organizing, and stimuli-responsive multi-cell-type Engineered Living Materials based on enzymatic polymerizations on cell surfaces (PolyCell-ELMs) (Applicants Bruns, Nico ;  Nuber, Ulrike )
• Smart Stimuli-Responsive Opalescent Bacterial Films (OPAL-Bac) (Applicants Gallei, Markus ;  Schneider, Marc )
• SporoPrinting – 3D matrices for immobilizing and controlling functionalized SporoBeads of B. subtilis as a structured protein displaying ELM platform with adaptive functions (Applicants Gelinsky, Michael ;  Mascher, Thorsten )

• Spokesperson: Professorin Dr. Aránzazu del Campo Bécares