El estudio desarrollado por los investigadores del departamento de Ciencia de Materiales, Óptica y Tecnología Electrónica de la UMH Luis Carretero, Salvador Blaya y María Gomariz explica algunos aspectos del espectro de absorción de la bacteriorodopsina mediante técnicas de mecánica cuántica y el efecto Fano. La bacteriorodopsina es una proteína fotocrómica que es objeto de múltiples estudios por sus aplicaciones electrónicas y fotónicas.
Aquí os dejamos el abstract del trabajo teórico y experimental publicado en la prestigiosa revista científica PLOS ONE.
We theoretically and experimentally analyze the formation of thick Purple Membrane (PM) polyacrylamide (PA) films by means of optical spectroscopy by considering the absorption of bacteriorhodopsin and scattering. We have applied semiclassical quantum mechanical techniques for the calculation of absorption spectra by taking into account the Fano effects on the ground state of bacteriorhodopsin. A model of the formation of PM-polyacrylamide films has been proposed based on the growth of polymeric chains around purple membrane. Experimentally, the temporal evolution of the polymerization process of acrylamide has been studied as function of the pH solution, obtaining a good correspondence to the proposed model. Thus, due to the formation of intermediate bacteriorhodopsin-doped nanogel, by controlling the polymerization process, an alternative methodology for the synthesis of bacteriorhodopsin-doped nanogels can be provided.