Living porous ceramics for bacteria-regulated gas sensing and carbon capture

TL;DR

This study develops porous ceramic materials colonized by bacteria, enabling self-regulated carbon capture and gas sensing, combining biological and abiotic components for environmental applications.

Contribution

It introduces engineered living porous ceramics with programmable functionalities for carbon capture and gas sensing, a novel integration of biological and ceramic materials.

Findings

Ceramic scaffolds support bacterial growth and function.

Living ceramics can capture CO2 directly from air.

They can detect toxic gases and convert them into detectable scents.

Abstract

Microorganisms hosted in abiotic structures have led to engineered living materials that can grow, sense and adapt in ways that mimic biological systems. Although porous structures should favor colonization by microorganisms, they have not yet been exploited as abiotic scaffolds for the development of living materials. Here, we report porous ceramics that are colonized by bacteria to form an engineered living material with self-regulated and genetically programmable carbon capture and gas-sensing functionalities. The carbon capture capability is achieved using wild-type photosynthetic cyanobacteria, whereas the gas-sensing function is generated utilizing genetically engineered E. coli. Hierarchical porous clay is used as ceramic scaffold and evaluated in terms of bacterial growth, water uptake and mechanical properties. Using state-of-the-art chemical analysis techniques, we demonstrate the ability of the living porous ceramics to capture CO2 directly from the air and to metabolically turn minute amounts of a toxic gas into a benign scent detectable by humans.