Abstract
Adding biomolecules to living organisms and cells is the basis for creating living materials or biohybrids for robotic systems. Bioorthogonal chemistry allows covalently modifying biomolecules with functional groups not natively present under biological conditions and is therefore applicable to microorganisms and cells. Click chemistry is a biorthogonal chemistry approach that allows the study and manipulation of living entities. Incorporating the bioorthogonal click-chemistry handle, azide groups, into living microorganisms has been achieved by metabolic labeling, i.e., by culturing cells or organisms in a modified culture media having a specific natural molecular building block (e.g., amino acid, nucleotide, carbohydrate) modified with a tagged chemical analog. Here we explore the effect of the azide group incorporation into the magnetotactic bacteria Magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense (MSR-1) by adding a modified amino acid, 3-Azido-D-Alanine, during their cultivation. We show the existence of a concentration limit to effectively incorporate the azide group while maintaining the magnetic properties of the cells. We use this modification to explore the combination with versatile single-cell tagging methods.
Supplementary materials
Title
MSR-1 U-turn analysis
Description
Figure S1 showing the detailed U-turn determination of Cmag for MSR-1.
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Title
Video of MSR-1 with 0.005 mM Azide
Description
Video of MSR-1 being grown in the presence of 0.005 mM Azide
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Title
Video of MSR-1 with 0.06 mM Azide
Description
Video of MSR-1 being grown in the presence of 0.06 mM Azide
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Title
Video of MSR-1 with 0.1 mM Azide
Description
Video of MSR-1 with 0.1 mM Azide
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