Construction of copper removing bacteria through the integration of two-component system and cell surface display.

Synthetic biological systems are becoming more and more feasible for commercial and medical purposes through the genetic engineering of several components. The simple assembly of a genetic circuit was shown to stimulate the removal of copper by bacteria through the engineering of a two-component system. The CusSR two-component systems is a regulator of Escherichia coli copper homeostatic system. In this system, genetic circuits of CusSR were fused to a cell surface display system for metal adsorption; this system is suitable for the display of a copper binding peptide through outer membrane protein C (OmpC). E. coli ompC codes for an outer membrane pore protein (porin) are induced at high osmolarity and temperature, which can also be used as an anchoring motif to accept the passenger proteins. The bacteria that produce the chimeric OmpC containing the copper binding peptide adsorbed maximum concentrations of 92.2 μmol of Cu(2+)/gram dry weight of bacterial cells. This synthetic bacterial system senses the specific heavy metal and activates a cell surface display system that acts to remove the metal.