Protein Stabilising Molecular Gels: Interfacing biological machinery with electronics for biosensing and bioenergy devices

生命系统具有非常有效的机制来执行许多有用的任务，例如能量产生、催化、逻辑功能、分子识别、运动性等。这些系统不仅高效，而且是绿色和可持续技术的一个很好的例子。如果负责这些过程的分子机器能够被纳入人造设备中，那将是非常有用的。然而，生物分子在脱离其自然生物环境（细胞）时是脆弱的。我们建议开发凝胶，基本上是水，通过结合具有精确分子组成的纤维网络来固定和结构化，从而稳定这些生物分子并使其用于设备中。由此产生的技术将联合收割机结合生物系统的优点（高效和完全可再生）和合成材料的优点（简单、低成本和耐用）。最终，我们希望利用这项技术将生物的能量供应机制，光合系统纳入凝胶颗粒。

Living systems have very efficient mechanisms to carry out a number of useful tasks, such as energy generation, catalysis, logic functions, molecular recognition, motility, etc. These systems are not only efficient, they are also a good example of green and sustainable technology. It would be very useful if the molecular machinery that is responsible for these processes could be incorporated in man-made devices. However, biological molecules are fragile when taken out of their natural biological environment (the cell). We propose to develop gels, essentially water that is immobilised and structured by the incorporation of network of fibres with a precise molecular composition, that stabilise these biological molecules and allow them to be used in devices. The resulting technology will combine the advantages of biological systems (highly efficient and fully renewable) with those of synthetic materials (simple, low-cost and robust). Ultimately, we hope to use this technology to incorporate biology's energy supply mechanism, photosynthetic systems into gel particles.