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Design and engineering of renewable, multifunctional biomaterials for sustainability
Summary
Scientists have engineered three plant- and bacteria-based materials to replace harmful plastics and "forever chemicals" (PFAS) that pollute our water, food, and bodies: a plant-inspired biodegradable food packaging film, a non-toxic water-repellent coating, and a bacteria-made adhesive that can even help monitor wound healing. This matters because most plastic waste today is never recycled and instead breaks down into microplastics or leaches toxic chemicals that end up in what we eat and drink—these new materials are designed to break down safely instead of lingering in the environment and our bodies.
Pollution stands as one of the grand challenges of this century. This problem is fueled by modern societies’ sweeping use of non-sustainable and polluting polymeric materials such as petrochemical-derived plastics and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Today, 91% of waste is discarded or incinerated, often after a single use. These pollutants then find their way into our water and food sources and pose a significant threat to global human health. Unfortunately, the materials that hold such grave risk are also those on which today’s society heavily depend. Thus, to ameliorate this problem requires the application-specific replacement of such materials. In the last few years, biologically produced alternatives (biopolymers) to polluting polymeric materials have emerged. However, these products are often limited in their material design, and thus applications. As such, novel sustainably derived materials are necessary to develop substantive replacements to conventional polluting polymers. To help address these challenges, this dissertation focuses on the multidisciplinary integration of biological engineering with materials science approaches to realize the production of polymeric materials that are both sustainably-derived and biodegradable. In the first aim, cellulosic composites will be studied to create multilayer biomimetic replacements for petrochemical plastic packaging materials. The resulting biomimetic material, the layered, ecological, advanced, multifunctional film (LEAFF) is based on the inspired by the structure of the natural plant leaf. LEAFF’s structure empowers the biodegradability of PLA, a material previously only known to be compostable, in ambient condition soil degradation experiments. In the second aim, we took advantage of the natural hydrophobicity of lignin’s aromatic structure to engineer particles for superhydrophobic coating applications to provide an alternative to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) use. The resulting superhydrophobic lignin-integrated particles (SLIPs) were demonstrated to achieve superhydrophobic performance over a broad range of pH while also showing multifunctionalities of UV stability and antifouling performance. Finally, in the third aim, a genetic engineering approach was developed to tailor the monomer content of medium chain length polyhydroxyalkanoates (mcl-PHA) in Pseudomonas putida. This structural control at the monomer-level of our PHA materials was then used to engineer the adhesive performance of PHA. The multifunctionality of the resultant PHA bioadhesives was then realized through protein engineering of a PHA-binding domain attached to a fluorescent biosensor sensitive to pH to monitor wound healing. Collectively, these studies not only advance biopolymeric materials design strategies but deliver multifunctional materials that can contribute towards engineering sustainable solutions to polluting polymeric materials by offsetting their use.