Ibec Seminar. Prof. Pierangelo Gobbo
A search for the right scientific question: a journey through Italy, Canada, UK and back again.
Prof. Pierangelo Gobbo, University of Trieste
Bottom-up synthetic biology is an emerging research field whose objectives is to design and fabricate existing biological systems from inanimate molecules, materials, and chemical reactions.[1] One of the key biological systems that bottom-up synthetic biology is trying to re-design and fabricate is the living cell. This research led to the concept of “protocell” and “prototissues”.[2] A protocell is a micro-compartmentalised system capable of imitating at least one of the key features of a living cell (e.g., enzyme catalysis, communication based on diffusible chemical signals, information storage etc.). A prototissue is instead a free-standing and covalently interconnected network of communicating protocell units that can display synergistic functions.[3, 4]
While thus far efforts have been placed in the development of methods to fabricate PCMs with complex 3D architectures and demonstrate their chemical communication properties, in this contribution I will show how I used the knowledge acquired during my entire scientific journey to move beyond the state-of-the-art in bottom-up synthetic biology, and develop the first prototissues capable of photo-mechano-chemical transduction.[5] These are prototissues capable of converting a light stimulus into complex mechanical movements that in turn can influence the biocatalysis hosted within the protocell units composing the material itself. In order to achieve this, we have designed and assembled a covalent and thermoresponsive poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (P(NIPAM)) polymer network directly inside the lumen of the protocells composing the PCM, where we also placed poly(ethylene oxide) (PEG) stabilised gold nanoparticles (AuNPs), amyloglucosidase (AGx), and glucose oxidase (GOx). By exploiting the photo-thermal effect of AuNPs and the thermoresponsive properties of the PNIPAM network in a synergistic manner, we were able to achieve reversible light-induced contractions of the PCM. Most importantly, the contraction caused the material to become hydrophobic. This made the contracted protocell membranes impermeable to small hydrophilic substrate molecules for enzyme catalysis, and effectively shut off the hosted enzyme cascade.
The fabrication of tissue-like materials with increasingly advanced biomimetic properties will not only help us to understand the physicochemical basis of the emerging behaviours of living tissues, but will also find important applications in tissue engineering, pharmacokinetics, mechanobiology, personalised therapy, in the development of micro-bioreactors and soft robotics.
Pierangelo Gobbo received his BSc (2008) and MSc (2010) in Chemistry at the University of Padua (Italy) and his PhD in 2016 at the University of Western Ontario (Canada). In 2016 he joined the research group of Prof. Stephen Mann, FRS at the University of Bristol (UK) as an NSERC of Canada Postdoctoral Fellow first, and then as an EU Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow. In 2019 Pierangelo started his independent research career at the School of Chemistry of the University of Bristol under a Vice-Chancellor’s Fellowship (Assistant Professorship). In October 2021 Pierangelo moved to the Department of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences of the University of Trieste (Italy) where he is pioneering the first strategies to use synthetic cells (or “protocells”) as foundational units to assemble free-standing tissue-like materials with complex 3D architectures and programmable bio-inspired emergent behaviours such as contractility, phototropism, and biochemical sensing. During his academic career Pierangelo was awarded numerous awards for excellence in research. The most recent are Italy’s Giacomo Ciamician Medal for Organic Chemistry (2021), UK’s EPSRC New Investigator Award (2020), and the Canada’s Governor General’s Gold Medal (2017). He is currently PI on an ERC Starting Grant 2021, co-coordinator of an EIC Pathfinder Open 2022, and the coordinator of other National research projects.
