Descrizione del progetto
Strumenti quantistici all’avanguardia per l’analisi delle biomolecole
L’analisi del contenuto molecolare di un campione biologico è il pane quotidiano delle scienze della vita: DNA, peptidi o proteine vengono identificati in base alla loro grandezza e agli elementi costitutivi che contengono. Questo è ciò che la spettroscopia di massa ottiene se le molecole sono isolate e altamente caricate in alto vuoto. SuperMaMa svilupperà tecnologie per estendere queste capacità anche a molecole caricate singolarmente e neutre. La combinazione di funzionalizzazione chimica, nuovi metodi di filtraggio di massa, raffreddamento vicino allo zero assoluto e luce laser ultraveloce garantiscono il massimo controllo sul movimento e sullo stato di carica di peptidi e proteine. L’integrazione di una serie di nanofili superconduttori con elettronica criogenica di bordo si tradurrà in una fotocamera quantistica ultraveloce come un rilevatore di particelle universale, qui sviluppato inizialmente per le biomolecole al fine di migliorare la spettrometria di massa, e aprirà nuove strade nella spettroscopia ottica e nell’interferometria quantistica molecolare.
Obiettivo
Mass spectrometry has become a multi-billion dollar market word-wide, because it allows one to quantitatively assess the molecular content of a sample and to retrieve molecular structure information.
SUPERMAMA now aims at breaking new scientific grounds for new technologies that shall boost the capabilities of mass spectrometry as well as of optical spectroscopy. Here we specifically target singly charged and neutral high-mass proteins.
SUPERMAMA will develop, test and combine the first integrated superconducting nanowire array (SNWA) with advanced cryogenic onboard electronics in a largely re-modelled ESI-TOF-machine. The efficient detection of massive biomolecules at low kinetic energy will be an important first milestone for mass spectrometry.
The development of a new generation of photocleavable tags shall allow the preparation of neutral protein beams from mass-selected ions in focused transverse high-power laser fields.
Photo-cleavage post-ionization of tagged proteins shall also be studied as a generic tool to decouple the volatilization from the charging process. This will enable the combination of a systematic analysis of neutral proteins in the gas phase with subsequent mass spectroscopy.
The combination of all techniques shall open new avenues for few-photon calorimetry and single-photon recoil spectroscopy. The calorimetry studies will explore the sensitivity of SNWA detection to molecular heat. Future experiments will study the shift of molecular matter-wave interference fringes caused by the recoil of a single photon.
Two industrial and three academic research teams represent a highly interdisciplinary consortium of experts from mass spectrometry, superconductor technology, integrated electronic engineering, synthetic chemistry, as well as molecular beam physics and quantum optics who work together in towards their joint goal to advance mass spectrometry and optical spectroscopy in a domain that has remained unexplored so far.
Campo scientifico
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteins
- natural scienceschemical sciencesanalytical chemistrycalorimetry
- natural scienceschemical sciencesanalytical chemistrymass spectrometry
- natural sciencesphysical scienceselectromagnetism and electronicssuperconductivity
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesopticsspectroscopy
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
Invito a presentare proposte
Vedi altri progetti per questo bandoBando secondario
H2020-FETOPEN-2018-2019-2020-01
Meccanismo di finanziamento
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinatore
1010 Wien
Austria