CAREER: Correlation of coupled electronic and nuclear motions in biological photoreceptors using femtosecond multidimensional spectroscopies

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。该职业奖由化学部门的实验物理化学项目资助，支持华盛顿大学哈利勒教授的实验研究项目，以开发新的光谱技术来测量化学和生物系统中的耦合电子和核运动。利用光学和红外飞秒场的多维光谱将直接探测电子和振动运动之间的耦合。这项工作将包括合成新的脉冲序列，以直观的方式解释和显示3-D数据集，并开发一个理论框架，将光谱可观测值与物理相关的分子参数联系起来。该项目的最终目标将是利用这些新的光谱来了解光子的吸收如何转化为光感受器蛋白质的生物功能。上述实验方案的结果将广泛影响超快多维光谱学和超快光生物学领域。详细了解光生物学的光受体蛋白对设计新的光信号蛋白和仿生光开关器件具有重要意义。该方案处于光学、化学和生物科学的交叉点，为研究生和本科生提供了丰富的训练场地。与西雅图MESA（数学工程科学成就）分会合作，来自西雅图高中的少数族裔学生将在PI的实验室度过一个夏天，进行实验。物理化学本科课程开发的努力将包括利用当前生物物理文献中的例子开发一系列问题，并通过互联网将它们提供给更广泛的科学界。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). This CAREER award, funded by the Experimental Physical Chemistry Program of the Chemistry Division, supports an experimental research program by Professor Khalil of University of Washington to develop new spectroscopic techniques to measure coupled electronic and nuclear motions in chemical and biological systems. Multidimensional spectroscopies utilizing optical and infrared femtosecond fields will directly probe couplings between electronic and vibrational motions. This effort will include synthesizing new pulse sequences, interpreting and displaying the 3-D data set in an intuitive manner, and developing a theoretical framework for relating spectroscopic observables to physically relevant molecular parameters. The end goal of this project will be to use these novel spectroscopies to learn how the absorption of a photon translates into biological function in photoreceptor proteins.The results from the experimental program described above will broadly impact the fields of ultrafast multidimensional spectroscopy and ultrafast photobiology. A detailed understanding of the photobiology photoreceptor proteins has implications for designing de novo photo-signaling proteins and bio-mimetic light-switching devices.This proposal lies at the interface of optical, chemical and biological sciences, which provides a rich training ground for graduate and undergraduate students. In partnership with Seattle MESA (Mathematics Engineering Science Achievement) chapter, underrepresented minority students from Seattle high schools will spend a summer in the PI's laboratory performing experiments. Efforts in undergraduate curriculum development in physical chemistry will include developing a series of problems using examples from current biophysical literature and making them available to the wider scientific community via the internet.