Nanoscale patterning of engineered light harvesting complexes.

大自然制造微小的机器/膜和蛋白质复合体--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/这是一个更高效的过程建立起来的。为了用自然界的机器制造设备，我们需要采用类似的方法，并用单个蛋白质来建造它们。我们的工作研究了一种特殊类型的蛋白质，一种捕光复合体(LHC)，它可以捕捉光线，并将其沿着一模一样的LHC网络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，类似于为生物电池充电。我们将使用大型强子对撞机作为一个模型系统，在尝试用更大、更复杂的蛋白质进行类似的实验之前，我们可以在这个系统上测试我们的想法。大型强子对撞机捕捉光线，因此很容易发现我们对大型强子对撞机所做的任何事情是否损坏了它，只需向它照射光线，并测量它是否仍然能够捕捉光线。我们正试图将大型强子对撞机连接到一个电子芯片上，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成分制造混合系统。我们为什么要尝试这样做呢？直到最近，电子芯片只包含无机材料，但现在人们越来越有兴趣使用大自然已经为特定工作设计的蛋白质，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，不能很容易地将它们准确地放置在芯片上需要它们的地方，因为它们太小了，无法实际提取。我们需要找到方法告诉蛋白质我们想要它在哪里，这样它才能为我们完成工作，并结合到芯片上的正确位置。大自然已经找到了告诉蛋白质它应该附着什么，不应该附着什么的方法，因此我们必须学习如何做到这一点，这样我们才能制造出一种告诉蛋白质“附着在这里”的“智能”材料。我们的研究将使用大型强子对撞机帮助我们学习这些自然的方向指令，我们将知道什么时候我们成功了，因为当我们照射到大型强子对撞机上时，大型强子对撞机将充当一个微小的灯塔，有效地说‘我在这里，就在你想让我在的地方’。一旦我们掌握了这一知识，就可以将其应用于更实际的方式，例如制造利用蛋白质来检测毒物或污染物的混合芯片，其水平远远低于传统检测器。

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.