共偶联藻胆色素与叶绿素衍生物的捕光传能蛋白元件的人工设计

蓝细菌（即蓝藻）是放氧光合作用的祖先，由于其高效光合作用需要，蓝细菌光合作用捕光复合物由结合藻胆色素与叶绿素的蛋白质组成。在蓝细菌捕光复合物研究中，我们初步发现了人工设计共偶联藻胆色素与叶绿素衍生物的捕光传能蛋白的路线，由于这类共偶联藻胆色素与叶绿素的捕光传能蛋白元件在人造光合作用中的重要性，计划在本项目中系统分子设计结合藻胆色素的蛋白结构域和结合叶绿素的蛋白结构域，设计这些结构域的多种排列组合，然后让分子设计的结构域共偶联藻胆色素与叶绿素衍生物，构建各种多系列的共偶联藻胆色素与叶绿素衍生物的捕光传能蛋白元件。通过吸收和荧光光谱评价这些捕光传能蛋白元件的性能，然后反馈到分子设计，以设计更好的共偶联藻胆色素与叶绿素的捕光传能元件。该研究将建立人造光合作用捕光传能元件合成的新技术与方法，发展出系列新型人造光合作用捕光传能元件，对认识光合作用捕光传能机制，对人造光合作用设计与构建具有重要意义

Cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) are ancestor of oxygen-evolving photosynthetic organisms. Their light-harvesting and -transferring complexes contain bilins and chlorophylls attached with apo-proteins. On the related studies, we found a preliminary method how to design the chromoproteins complexing with both bilin and chlorophyll derivatives. As the designed chromoproteins are very important to the construction of artificial photosynthesis, we plan to study in this project as follows: (1) design of domains to bind efficiently bilin derivatives; (2) design of domains to bind efficiently chlorophyll derivatives; (3) modification of bilins to adjust their energy levels; (4) modification of chlorophylls to adjust their energy levels; (5) combination of these respective domains to coordinate each other well; (6) binding of the modified chromophores with the designed apo-proteins to assure the efficient light-harvesting and -transferring. Using absorption, fluorescence excitation and emission spectroscopy evaluates the light-harvesting and transferring capacities of these designed chromoprotein units, and improves the designed units based on the evaluation. The studies will lead to new methods and techniques and design series of novel light-harvesting and -transferring units for artificial photosynthesis, which is significant to elucidate the mechanisms of light-harvesting and -transferring in photosynthesis and to design and construct the artificial photosynthesis.