Cell surface engineering with functional polymers is an effective strategy to modulate cell activity. Here, a bio‐palladium catalyzed polymerization strategy was developed for in situ synthesis of conjugated polymers on living cell surfaces. Through Sonagashira polymerization, photoactive polyphenyleneethynylene (PPE) is synthesized on the cell surface via cell‐generated bio‐Pd catalyst. The in situ formed PPE is identified by excellent light‐harvest capacity and blue fluorescence on the surfaces of E. coli and C. pyrenoidosa. Besides imaging microbes for tracing the polymerization process, PPE also exhibits enhanced antibacterial activity against E. coli. It can also augment the ATP synthesis of C. pyrenoidosa through enlarging the light absorption and accelerating the cyclic electron transport of the algae. With this bio‐metal catalyzed polymerization method, functional polymers can be synthesized in situ on the living cell surface.
Artificial regulation of state transition between photosystem I (PSI) and PSII will be a smart and promising way to improve efficiency of natural photosynthesis. In this work, we found that a synthetic light-harvesting polymer [poly(boron-dipyrromethene-co-fluorene) (PBF)] with green light absorption and far-red emission could improve PSI activity of algae Chlorella pyrenoidosa, followed by further upgrading PSII activity to augment natural photosynthesis. For light-dependent reactions, PBF accelerated photosynthetic electron transfer, and the productions of oxygen, ATP and NADPH were increased by 120, 97, and 76%, respectively. For light-independent reactions, the RuBisCO activity was enhanced by 1.5-fold, while the expression levels of rbcL encoding RuBisCO and prk encoding phosphoribulokinase were up-regulated by 2.6 and 1.5-fold, respectively. Furthermore, PBF could be absorbed by the Arabidopsis thaliana to speed up cell mitosis and enhance photosynthesis. By improving the efficiency of natural photosynthesis, synthetic light-harvesting polymer materials show promising potential applications for biofuel production.
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