Final Report Summary - PS3 (An artificial water-soluble photosystem by protein design)
In the course of the PS3 project the major protein design, biochemical, and biophysical challenges were addressed through interdisciplinary research that involved developing and implementing computational tools for protein design, molecular, and electronic structure prediction, novel biochemical and molecular biology techniques for assembly and production of protein cofactor complexes, and a variety of spectroscopic tools for assessing the structure, organization, and functionality of the new protein-pigment complexes. Although our ultimate goal was not met by the end PS3 project, much progress has been made in designing and assembling prototypes of small artificial redox proteins such as iron-sulfur clusters proteins, and new templates for chlorophyll-binding proteins assembled by a novel water-in-oil emulsion-based method. The design and assembly of multi-chlorophyll binding proteins, has proved to be the most challenging and will require further study and development of the design protocols to account for the differences in water-solubility between the protein and chlorophylls. Successful designs may then be coupled to highly efficient biological catalysts that will enable using light for driving chemical reactions for fuel production.
These may then be used as building blocks for the construction of artificial solar energy conversion systems.