Bifunctional DSUP-OP fiber with high adsorption selectivity and antibiofouling activity for uranium extraction from seawater

Due to the growing demand for nuclear energy and ecological safety, the efficient and rapid recovery of uranium from aqueous solution, especially seawater, is a matter of great concern. For the sake of recovering uranium from seawater practically, adsorbents that provided with the advantages of superb adsorption performance, high selectivity, ultrafast extraction speed, and excellent antibacterial activity are urgently needed. Herein, an adsorbent DSUP-OP fiber with high selectivity and affinity, ultrafast equilibrium rate, excellent antibacterial performance was designed by fusing dual super-uranyl binding protein (DSUP) and antibacterial peptide omiganan peptide (OP). It is discovered that the DSUP-OP fiber is appropriate for use in a wide range of pH, and the general metals coexisting with uranium have almost no perceptible effect on its uranium adsorption property in a significant way. Furthermore, DSUP-OP fiber possesses outstanding antibacterial activities, which will decrease the impacts of biofouling brought about by marine microorganisms and achieves a remarkable uranium extraction performance of 8.05 mg/g within 4 days in natural seawater. Owing to its superior selectivity, superb antibacterial performance as well as breakthrough uranium extraction capacity, as a late-model adsorbent for extracting uranium from seawater, DSUP-OP fiber shows great application potential. •DSUP-OP fiber was designed through gene engineering and biomimetic spinning.•DSUP-OP fiber showed high selectivity and affinity, excellent antibacterial activity.•It has a wide range of applications, and other metal ions hardly interfere with it.•It can achieve superb adsorption performance of 8.05 mg/g within 4 days in seawater.