Electrochemically Programmable Biochemical Networks for Animate Materials

Introduction

Life’s biological materials are animate materials, capable of adapting to their surroundings by actively changing in response to the environment. A key distinguishing feature of animate materials is their ability to autonomously make decisions over how to respond. An example of an animate material is your skin: on cold days, the hairs on your skin rise to trap warm air without your conscious thought.

Decision-Making in Living Materials

The ability of living materials to make decisions arises from biochemical reaction networks (e.g., protein signaling) in the material. The networks process environmental information and decide how to adapt the material in response.

Advantages of Artificial Animate Materials

Artificial animate materials promise to be superior for many applications (e.g., soft robots, MedTech) compared to their inert counterparts. Their decision-making abilities will enable them to:

1. Leverage advantageous events into better outcomes.
2. Limit the damage from disadvantageous ones.

However, currently, there is not a well-established route to fabricate artificial animate materials.

Project Overview: eBioNetAniMat

eBioNetAniMat charts a pathway to a new generation of electrochemically programmable artificial animate materials that act as soft actuators capable of autonomously making decisions about their movement.

Novel Chemical Reaction Networks

Novel, protein-based chemical reaction networks integrated into the actuators will process electrochemical stimuli and make decisions over how to generate chemo-mechanical motion, e.g., peristalsis, rotation.

Method Development

I will develop a method for electrochemically controlling protein activity and use this to construct a series of novel, electrochemically programmable protein networks of increasing complexity.

Electrochemical Fabrication

I will develop a new method for electrochemical fabrication of patterned hydrogels with new protein redox-binding tools.

Integration and Impact

Finally, I will unite the new protein networks and gels together to make novel artificial animate actuators that will be biocompatible, integrable with electronic devices, and have potentially transformative impacts in MedTech and soft robots.