Catalytic materials enabled by a programmable assembly of synthetic polymers and bacterial spores

Natural biological materials are formed by self-assembly processes and catalyze a myriad of reactions. Here, we report a programmable molecular assembly of designed synthetic polymers with engineered Bacillus subtilis spores. The bacterial spore-based materials possess modular mechanical and functional properties derived from the independent design and assembly of synthetic polymers and engineered spores . 
We discovered that phenylboronic acid (PBA) derivatives form tunable and reversible dynamic covalent bonds with the spore surface glycan. Spore labeling was performed using fluorescent PBA probes and monitored by fluorescence microscopy and spectroscopy. Binding affinities of PBA derivatives to spore surface glycan was controlled by aryl substituent effects. On the basis of this finding, PBA-functionalized statistical copolymers were synthesized and assembled with B. subtilis spores to afford macroscopic materials that exhibited programmable stiffness, self-healing, prolonged dry sto..., All experimental methods are briefly described in the README.md file, and fully detailed in the Supporting Information file for the paper article \"Catalytic materials enabled by a programmable assembly of synthetic polymers and engineered bacterial spores\".,