Making Light Work With Bacterial Nanowires

Inspired by natural photosynthesis and addressing limitations of purely synthetic approaches,
this project aims to provide proof of principle for light-driven chemical synthesis through the
design and assembly of novel inorganic:biological hybrid materials.
The project will establish methods to combine robust, synthetic light-harvesting materials with
non-photosynthetic bacteria in a sustainable solution to delivering chemical transformations.
The surface of Shewanella bacteria will be site-selectively labelled with light-harvesting
molecules using detailed knowledge of the MTR protein complex, a biological molecular wire,
that conducts electrons across the bacterial outer membrane. In this way, absorption of light
will drive electrons across the bacterial outer membrane and, in turn, redox catalysis by
enzymes inside the bacterium. During the project MTR variants will be designed to present
different sites for labelling. The variants will be purified, labelled and incorporated into vesicles
where their ability to perform light-driven electron transfer across a lipid bilayer will be
quantified. For the best-performing MTR variants, protocols for their labelling on bacteria will
be established, and light-driven production of fuels, for example, hydrogen (from water) and
formate (from the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide), will be quantified.