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[Display omitted] • Shewanella loihica PV-4 exhibited high performance in reducing CO 2 to formate. • A novel three-dimensional biological self-assembled cathode was constructed. • No involvement of electron mediators was found in whole cell catalysis. • Faraday efficiency of bioelectrosynthetic CO 2 -to-formate reached 99.95%. Bioelectrochemical CO 2 reduction (bio-CO 2 R) provides a sustainable and carbon neutral power-to-chemical route. Whole-cell electrosynthesis is one of the attractive strategies to realize CO 2 R due to its simple and low-cost superiorities. However, it is still challenging to overcome the sluggish transmembrane electron transfer of microorganisms without exogenously added mediators. Here, we described the fabrication of biohydrogel that contains bio-reduced graphene oxide (rGO) and living electroactive bacteria (EAB) for bio-CO 2 R. The EAB exhibited surprising ability to self-assemble biohydrogel that was further served as biocathode to drive CO 2 -to-formate electrosynthesis. With the close interaction between EAB and rGO nanosheets, the transmembrane electron transfer achieved at high Faradaic efficiency (∼99.5 %) and 46-fold increase of formate titer without exogenous mediator. This work provided the facile and practical approach to bridge the bacterial cell and electrode for efficient electron transfer and implied the new possibility to store the electric energy into chemicals with bio-CO 2 R. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Cytocompatible bacterial ATRP (b- ATRP) was developed. • Bacterial nanohybrids with high viability were obtained with b -ATRP. • The surface electric property of bacterial cells was well-controlled by b- ATRP. • Cr(VI) removal rate was improved by 3 times with bacterial nanohybrid. Surface-initiated activator regenerated by electron transfer atom transfer radical polymerization (SI-ARGET ATRP) has great potential to modify living cell surface with controlled architecture and tailored phenotype. However, it is challenging to engineer the bacterial cells with current SI-ARGET ATRP due to low cellular tolerance to the toxic reagents in polymerization. In this study, a cytocompatible bacterial SI-ARGET ATRP (b -ATRP) strategy was developed for individual nanoencapsulation of living bacterial cell. With step by step optimization of reaction conditions, living nanohybrid with high cell viability (>70%) was achieved with b -ATRP. Furthermore, living Shewanella nanohybrids with controllable surface electric property were fabricated with b -ATRP and applied for aqueous Cr(VI) treatment. Impressively, nanoencapsulation of cells with poly(4-vinylpyridine) improved the Cr(VI) removal rate by 3 times. This work provided a new approach to engineer the living bacterial cell surface and expanded the ATRP applications to prokaryotic cell and bioremediation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]