Effective disposal and remediation of chemical agents with designer living biofilm materials in soil and water

Chemical agents (CAs) and their analogues, as representative persistent organic pollutants, are of serious global concerns and can have devastating impacts on environments and human beings. Enzymes used for decontamination of such chemical pollutions often lack high efficacy and robustness against environmental pressures, thereby limiting their practical application in bioremediation. Here, we report living materials based on genetically engineered biofilms that exhibit remarkable enzymatic activities, superior environmental tolerance, self-regeneration, recyclable usage, and tunable functionality. We show that the designer living materials can degrade CAs and pesticides with high efficacy in an eco-friendly manner, and our systems enable actual elimination of CAs pollution in water and soil. The degradation capacity of the designer living materials can achieve more than 95% for 5 mg/ml HD, 5 mg/ml GD and 5 mg/ml VX within 60 min under laboratory conditions, and the turnover numbers of the designer living materials for HD, GD, and VX have increased by more than 1.3 times compared with free enzymes. In addition, the relative activities of the designer living materials remained almost unchanged after 5 recycles, retaining over 95% of their initial catalytic activities even after the final cycle. Combining the adhesive engineered biofilm living materials with electropositive granule media to form a bifunctional composite material, we further demonstrate coinstantaneous removal of biological and chemical pollutants in environmental water. Our work thus establishes a general approach to improve the robustness of enzymes against environmental pressures and provides a sustainable method for decontamination of chemical and biological pollutions.