Hierarchically Structured, Self-Healing, Fluorescent,Bioactive Hydrogels with Self-Organizing Bundles of Phage Nanofilaments

Bacteriophages are essentially bionanoparticles with a protein coat, the composition of which can be controlled with atomic precision via genetic engineering, a property that makes them superior to synthetic nanoparticles as building blocks for bottom-up synthesis of multifunctional materials with advanced properties. We report hierarchically structured hydrogels of self-organized M13 bacteriophage bundles, composed of hundreds of M13 nanofilaments, which exhibit both long-range and micron-scale order, are visible in electron micrographs of the cross-linked state, and can adsorb up to 16× their weight in water. We further demonstrate that these hierarchical hydrogels of M13 exhibit advanced properties at room temperature, namely, self-healing under biological conditions, autofluorescence in three channels, which decays through biodegradation, potentiating non-destructive imaging capability, and bioactivity in the cross-linked state toward the host bacteria. The latter is, in particular, a powerful propert...