A Fourier Analysis Tool for Biological Nano-optics

本项目将开发和实施一种新的分析工具，用于研究变色和透明生物阵列的纳米光学功能形态。该方法利用二维和三维电子显微镜图像的二维和三维离散傅里叶分析来描述生物阵列的纳米结构周期性，预测其反射光谱的色调和形状，并验证这些结构通过相干散射（即干涉）产生颜色或透明度的假设。该项目将进一步扩展该方法，并将其应用于脊椎动物、无脊椎动物、植物和病毒聚集体的纳米光学阵列的演示分析，这些纳米光学阵列在空间组织、组成和光学性质上都有所不同。模型所要求的物理近似的准确性将通过与使用时域有限差分法的显式解的比较来检验。提出的工具将统一目前生物纳米结构的光学分析方法，首次允许对纳米结构类别之间的进化转变进行功能分析。该工具将对纳米光学生物阵列在通信、配偶选择、感觉生物学、隐密码和其他纳米结构生物学领域的功能研究产生广泛的影响。

This project will develop and implement a new analytical tool for the investigation of the nano-optic functional morphology of color-producing and transparent biological arrays. The method uses 2D and 3D discrete Fourier analysis of 2D and 3D electron microscope images to describe the nanostructural periodicity of biological arrays, to predict the hue and shape of their reflectance spectra, and to test the hypothesis that these structures produce colors or transparency by coherent scattering (i.e. interference). The project will further expand the method and apply it in demonstration analyses of nano-optic arrays from vertebrates, invertebrates, plants, and viral aggregations that vary in spatial organization, composition, and optical properties. The accuracy of the physical approximations required by the model will be tested by comparison to explicit solutions using the finite-difference time-domain method. The proposed tools will unify current methods of optical analysis of biological nanostructures, permitting functional analysis of evolutionary transitions among nanostructural classes for the first time. The proposed tool will have broad implications for the study of the function of nano-optic biological arrays in communication, mate choice, sensory biology, crypsis, and other fields nanostructural biology.