An Chassis for Production of Electrically Conductive Protein Nanowires.

pilin-based electrically conductive protein nanowires (e-PNs) are a revolutionary electronic material. They offer novel options for electronic sensing applications and have the remarkable ability to harvest electrical energy from atmospheric humidity. However, technical constraints limit mass cultivation and genetic manipulation of . Therefore, we designed a strain of to express e-PNs by introducing a plasmid that contained an inducible operon with genes for type IV pili biogenesis machinery and a synthetic gene designed to yield a peptide monomer that could be assembled into e-PNs. The e-PNs expressed in and harvested with a simple filtration method had the same diameter (3 nm) and conductance as e-PNs expressed in . These results, coupled with the robustness of for mass cultivation and the extensive toolbox for genetic manipulation, greatly expand the opportunities for large-scale fabrication of novel e-PNs.