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An Introduction to Bio‐nanohybrid Materials

“…One of the first works reporting the entrapment of E. coli proposed its incorporation in a TMOS-derived silica network in which the water content was kept at about 70 wt% in order to guarantee the cells viability, but when silica gel was dried the bacterial activity decreased [62]. In order to overcome this drawback, the authors explored other possibilities such as the incorporation of glycerol in the silica matrix to increase bacteria viability ( Figure 1.4C), leading to almost 50 % of viable bacteria after one month of ageing [63], or the addition of quorum sensing molecules involved in intercellular communication, which increase the cells viability to 100 % after one month [64].…”

Bioactive Sol‐Gel Hybrids

“…It is slightly better than for free bacteria ( V max ª 0.9 mmol/mn, K M ª 0.45 mM). This increase in catalytic activity has been ascribed to some lysis of the membrane of bacteria cells allowing a better diffusion of the reactants [89]. Experiments have been performed in order to compare the behavior of bacteria trapped in alkoxide or aqueous silica gels with bacteria suspended in a buffer solution.…”

Engineering Cellular Photocomposite Materials Using Convective Assembly

“…Various types of cellular (whole cell) bio-mimetic leaves are reported, including those made from living cells and photoactive materials cross-linked in sol-gel synthetic polymers, sol-gel oxide ceramics, and silica gel glasses (see Table 1) [17,77,78,79,80,81,82,83]. …”