Issue 3, 2019 - Important progress in the preparation of functionalized nanobacterial cellulose

Nanobacterial cellulose (BC) is a cellulose material generated by microbial fermentation, which has good application prospects
in many fields such as chemical sensing, biological imaging, ultraviolet shielding, oil adsorption, fuel cells, biomedical materials, ion detection, and anti-counterfeiting marking.
At present, BC is mainly functionalized
by physical coating or chemical modification.
The physical coating conditions are mild, but the functionalized modified molecules are easy to fall off
.
The chemical modification modified materials have poor performance, serious pollution, and are difficult to scale production
.

In view of the above problems, Xian Mo and Zhang Haibo led by Xian Mo and Zhang Haibo, Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess, Chinese Academy of Sciences, developed a new preparation method for functionalized nanobacterial cellulose, using 6-carboxyfluorescein-modified glucose as a substrate to produce BC with unnatural characteristic fluorescence function by microbial in-situ fermentation
.

This method verifies the feasibility of in situ synthesis of functional materials by microbial fermentation, realizes the microbial synthesis of fluorescent functional cellulose materials, and successfully expands synthetic biology to the field of
material functionalization.
Characterization analysis shows that the materials obtained by this method have excellent properties
.
This method has the advantages of green, low cost, controllable functional strength and uniform distribution, which solves the bottleneck problem in the synthesis and performance of functional materials today, and is expected to achieve chiral modification
at specific sites of functional molecules.
This work provides a new direction and idea
for the biological synthesis of functional BC materials.