Innovative Hosts for Bacteriorhodopsin-Based Optical Memory

IPITEK, together with Professor Lanyl's group at University Of California, Irvine (UCI) propose to develop novel DNA-based, cross linkable polymers as biobased membrane films to host bacteriorhodopsin (BR) and newly discovered proteorhodopsin (PR), aimed at improving stability and operation speed of rhodopsin-based optical and bioelectronic devices. These new DNA-based polymers based on salmon sperm have shown very good optical and stability properties, and are successful hosts for electrooptic chromophores. Improvements will focus on immobiliztion of photosensitive BR material by use of cross-linkers, lipids, and other additions to the matrix. Our proposed Phase I effort focuses on DNA-based polymer host membrane stability and as well as improved BR and PR materials aimed at optimal operation in bionanotechnological devices. Phase II effort will utilize that information to develop, produce, and characterize stable and efficient BR/PR films for use in application environments determined in collaboration with Army scientists. Another potential Phase II effort is to exploit BR crystals for nano-scale optical memory applications. These crystals contain BR that is oriented uniformly such that the directionality of an optical response is not averaged out by random arrangement, a drawback in films. With appropriate scaling these BR crystals are ideal for nano-scale optical memory applications.