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The long term aim of this project is to engineer a light activated controllable power source that can be coupled to a variety of bio-molecular devices. The novel aspect of this work is in producing a self contained, integrated, energy translocation system within a bio-molecular machine. Specifically, to transfer light excitation energy from a light harvesting array to individual light activated components such as photosynthetic reaction centres/ rhodopsin/ bacteriorhodopsin and then into the chemical energy of adenosine triphosphate.
The current work focuses on the development and characterization of light harvesting and energy transfer systems. These systems will be based on natural membrane photosynthetic samples, porphyrin based nanorods and pigments coupled to polymeric scaffolds. Along side this, the group is also involved in development of a femto-second transient absorption pump-probe spectroscopy laser system at the National Laser Centre for measuring ultra-fast biological events.
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