MIB welcomes incoming researcher Dr Martin Spinck following prestigious ERC Starting Grant award
The 91直播 Institute of Biotechnology welcomes Dr Martin Spinck, who will join The University of Manchester after being awarded a prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant to pioneer a new class of programmable biomaterials.
The five-year fellowship will develop entirely new-to-nature materials known as metal-peptide frameworks (MPFs), combining synthetic biology, genetic code engineering and materials science to create biomaterials that can self-assemble and evolve inside living cells. Martin鈥檚 project, Genetically Programmed Synthesis of Functionalized Metal-Peptide Frameworks (SynMPFs), aims to overcome a major challenge in biomaterials research and could help drive advances in sustainable manufacturing, catalysis and bioelectronics.
The ERC Starting Grant is one of Europe's most competitive and prestigious funding schemes, supporting outstanding early-career researchers pursuing ambitious, high-risk, high-gain research.
Custom-made materials that behave like biological molecules
Metal-peptide frameworks are microscopic structures formed when short peptides connect to metal ions and assemble into an ordered network. By changing the peptide building blocks or the metals used, researchers could create materials with tailored properties, from speeding up chemical reactions to conducting electricity.
While metal-peptide frameworks have shown promise as highly versatile materials, discovering new frameworks currently relies on slow and laborious chemical synthesis.
To address this, the project will harness a specially engineered bacterial strain with an expanded genetic code that allows the incorporation of non-canonical amino acids, molecular building blocks not found naturally in living organisms. By programming cells to produce diverse libraries of metal-binding peptides, the team aims to accelerate the discovery of entirely new materials that can self-assemble and be optimised through directed evolution.
The research could open up new possibilities for designing biological materials that combine the sophisticated functions of proteins with the scalability and accessibility of synthetic materials. In the longer term, these materials could be engineered to act as sustainable biocatalysts, conductive biological components or multifunctional biomaterials with applications across biotechnology and green manufacturing.
Nature has evolved remarkable molecular biomaterial with extraordinary functional capabilities. Through this project, we aim to use genetic code engineering to allow cells to create metal-peptide frameworks. MPFs are artificial, man-made biomaterials with a currently uncharted evolutionary potential, programming their synthesis means that new MPFs can be discovered and optimised through evolution inside living cells. Ultimately, we hope to establish a new platform for developing sustainable biomaterials that can perform useful functions, from catalysis to conductivity, while providing new insights into how complex molecular structures can self-assemble and evolve.
The project builds upon Martin鈥檚 previous work in synthetic genomics and genetic code expansion, an area of synthetic biology that enables researchers to introduce new chemical building blocks into living organisms. His previous research has helped expand the range of molecules that can be genetically encoded.
By combining these capabilities with materials science, the ERC-funded research aims to establish metal-peptide frameworks as an entirely new class of evolvable biomaterials. Researchers hope that understanding how these structures form and function could eventually enable the development of materials capable of coupling renewable energy sources with biological processes, contributing to future sustainable technologies and a circular bioeconomy.