Mid-Term Report Summary - ROCOCO (CONFORMATIONAL COMMUNICATION AND CONTROL)
Many biological systems used to changes in the shape of molecules to communicate information. We are designing artificial structures that do the same thing. Mostly based on helices, we switch the shape of these molecules between left and right handed forms using interactions with other molecules or even with light. So far, we have shown that these mechanisms allow communication of information over distances spanning several nanometres – significant lengths on the molecular scale. Our next challenge is to communicate across membranes to allow us to use articial vesicles as controllable nano-scale compartments, and to allow our shape-switching molecules to interact with one another. Our plan is to create systems which communicate and process information on a molecular scale as efficiently as biology does, but using much simpler structures.