Nanoscale patterning of engineered light harvesting complexes.

大自然制造微小的机器/膜和蛋白质复合物——它们比我们的芯片制造技术所能制造的最小物体小十倍，但它是由许多更小的碎片/氨基酸/组成的，这是一个更有效的过程。为了从大自然的机器中制造设备，我们需要采用类似的方法，从单个蛋白质中制造它们。我们的工作研究了一种特殊类型的蛋白质，一种光收集复合体（LHC），它可以捕获光，并沿着相同的LHC网络将其传递给一种特殊的蛋白质，即反应中心（RC）。RC蛋白以质子梯度的形式将光能转化为化学能，类似于给生物电池充电。我们将使用大型强子对撞机作为一个模型系统，在对更大更复杂的蛋白质进行类似实验之前，我们可以在这个模型系统上测试我们的想法。大型强子对撞机捕获光，所以很容易发现我们对大型强子对撞机所做的任何事情是否已经损坏了它，只需要将光照射到它上并测量它是否仍然能够捕获光。我们正试图将大型强子对撞机与电子芯片连接起来，不是为了制造我们现在需要的东西，而是为了展示我们可以用生物和非生物组件制造一个混合系统。我们为什么要这么做？直到最近，电子芯片还只包含无机材料，但现在人们对使用自然界已经为特定工作设计的蛋白质越来越感兴趣，例如检测精确的气味，在芯片上为我们做同样的事情。不幸的是，蛋白质非常脆弱，不能轻易地精确地放置在芯片上需要它们的位置，因为它们太小而无法物理拾取。我们需要找到“告诉”蛋白质我们想要它在哪里的方法，这样它就能为我们工作，并与芯片上的正确点结合。大自然已经发展出一种方法，告诉蛋白质它应该附着在什么上，不应该附着在什么上，因此我们必须学习如何做到这一点，这样我们就可以制造出一种“智能”材料，“告诉”蛋白质“附着在这里”。我们的研究将使用大型强子对撞机来帮助我们学习这些自然的方向指令，我们将知道我们什么时候成功了，因为当我们向大型强子对撞机照射时，它就像一个小小的灯塔，有效地告诉我们：“我在这里，就在你想让我去的地方。”一旦我们掌握了这些知识，就可以将其应用于更实际的方面，例如制造混合芯片，利用蛋白质来检测远低于传统探测器水平的毒物或污染物。

Nature makes tiny machines / membranes and protein complexes - that are up to ten times smaller than the smallest object our chip making technology can make, but it builds them up from many smaller pieces / amino acids / which is a much more efficient process. In order to make devices from Nature's machines we need to adopt a similar approach and build them from individual proteins. Our work examines a particular type of protein, a light-harvesting complex (LHC), that can capture light and pass it along a network of identical LHCs to a specialised protein, the reaction centre (RC). The RC protein converts the light energy to chemical energy in the form of a proton gradient / akin to charging up a biological battery. We will use the LHC as a model system, one which we can test our ideas upon, before attempting similar experiments with larger more complex proteins. The LHC captures light, so it is easy to discover whether anything that we have done to the LHC has damaged it, simply by shining light on it and measuring if it is still able to capture the light. We are attempting to join the LHC to an electronic chip, not to make something we need right now but to show that we can make a hybrid system from biological and non-biological components. Why should we be attempting this ? Until very recently electronic chips contained only inorganic materials but now there is a growing interest in using proteins that nature has already designed for a specific job, eg to detect a precise smell, to do the same for us on a chip. Unfortunately proteins are very fragile and cannot easily be placed exactly where they are needed on a chip as they are too small to physically pick up. We need to find ways of 'telling' the protein where we want it to be so that it does the work for us and binds to the right point on the chip. Nature has developed ways of telling a protein what it should attach itself to and what it should not attach itself to, therefore we must learn how this is done so that we can make a 'smart' material that 'tells' the protein 'attach yourself here'. Our research will use the LHCs to help us learn these natural direction instructions and we will know when we have succeeded because the LHC will act as a tiny beacon when we shine light upon it, effectively saying 'here I am, right where you wanted me to be'. Once we have this knowledge it can then be applied in more practical ways, for example to make hybrid chips that make use of proteins to detect poisons or pollutants at levels far lower than conventional detectors can.