PI: Professor Jim Spencer
Co-Is: Dr Tomasso Garfagnini, Professor Carmen Galan, Dr Annela Seddon
This proposal is underpinned by two complementary synthetic biology research strands: generation of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) from the biological iron storage protein ferritin; and engineering of synthetic glycans for adhesion to cellular, in particular bacterial, surfaces. We propose to combine these to create glycan-labelled ferritin-based SPIONs as tools for bacterial labelling and detection. Previous work has established that SPIONs based upon cationised eukaryotic (horse spleen) ferritin can (non-specifically) magnetically label eukaryotic (mesenchymal stem cells; Nanoscale (2016) 8, 7474) and bacterial (both Gram-positive and Gram-negative; Appl Environ Microbiol (2016) 82, 3599)cells; and that synthetic glycans conjugated to (latex) nanoparticles can support species-specific adhesion to bacteria (ACS Biomater Sci Eng (2022) 8, 242). Here we will develop and validate a methodology for controlled, flexible glycan labelling of ferritin SPIONs and evaluate the ability of the resulting glycosylated magnetic nanoparticles to label and capture bacteria.