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Ultrafast Chirality for Life and Technology

Project description

Revolutionary accurate and precise chirality detection

Chirality is the asymmetry between a molecule and its mirror image, essential for metabolic reactions and protein stability in living organisms. Abnormal chirality can indicate various diseases, including brain and kidney disorders, as well as cancer. However, its detection and monitoring are challenging and require high precision. With the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the TRILOGY project aims to develop a revolutionary interface in the emerging field of ultrafast chirality, utilising attosecond electronic responses to light to detect chirality and abnormal chirality precisely, accurately and rapidly. The use of ultrafast electron dynamics is designed to allow them to overcome previous limitations and enable the development of key ultrafast spectroscopies.

Objective

TRILOGY establishes the interface between the emerging field of Ultrafast Chirality and its Life and Technology applications by using attosecond electronic response to light, the fastest agent in mediating electric signals, highlighted by the 2023 Physics Nobel Prize.
Chirality, a dissymmetry between a molecule and its mirror image, is a synonym of life: it enables metabolic reactions and stability of proteins. Abnormal chirality is an indicator for cancer cells, brain or kidney diseases, but its accurate detection requires a combination of high precision and speed, where attosecond response to light gives clear advantage to optical methods. Standard chiro-optical methods are fundamentally limited in accuracy by a ratio of molecular size to the light wavelength. Resolving ultrafast electron dynamics we remove this limitation and break into a new regime with chiral signals outperforming standard methods by several
orders of magnitude. We will take advantage of this paradigm shift in chiral measurements and develop new efficient ultrafast spectroscopies for discriminating medium sized chiral biomolecules and elucidating charge and spin transport in chiral media at the most fundamental level: the level of electrons. We overlap the training and innovation landscapes in a unique way inspired by a common drive to bring cutting-edge scientific developments to applications, enabled by strong involvement of industry. We will (i) integrate our methods with existing analytics for quick market adaptation, working with the market leader for mass spectrometry
(ThermoFisher), (ii) further them to unprecedentedly high throughput enabled by laser technology (Amplitude) and state-of-the-art imaging (PIimaging). We will make a difference, motivate and inspire young minds, training a new generation of researchers at the interface of fundamental science, technology and high-tech industry to bring cutting edge research through industrial applications to the benefit of the society.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

Keywords

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Funding Scheme

HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-DN - HORIZON TMA MSCA Doctoral Networks

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Call for proposal

(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2024-DN-01

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Coordinator

FORSCHUNGSVERBUND BERLIN EV
Net EU contribution
€ 290 272,32
Address
RUDOWER CHAUSSEE 17
12489 Berlin
Germany
Region
Berlin Berlin Berlin
Activity type
Research Organisations
Links
Total cost
No data

Participants (10)

Partners (18)