So it seems adding a photoswitch isn't terribly hard, but it's an in-vitro operation as far as I've been reading... at least we haven't figured out the synBio way to do it yet.
--
-Nathan
-- This is the seemingly simplest photo-isomerizable group:
goes from trans to cis when you illuminate it, so if you add this between areas of a protein in the right way, you can twist the protein into or out of a working conformation via a pulse of light.
The way to engineer a protein to receive the current in-vitro treatment is to identify all the surface exposed amino acids, find two that are about the distance relaxed or excited photoswitch, then try to engineer them to be cysteines and try to engineer away any other surface cysteines. Then express the engineered protein with your specially placed cysteine pair, purify the protein, add maleimide linker by using this cross-linker
then hope that it works, and if not try again. Here's a good slideshow of the concept:
Molecular Photoswitches – Properties and Applications
Shishi Lin, Organic Student Seminar, Yoon Group
It looks like we're getting close to understanding the chemistry of natural systems a bit better...
Reversible Photocontrol of Peptide Conformation with a Rhodopsin-like Photoswitch
Sooo, what are some existing biological light switches that people have seen hacked or are ripe to be?
I'm wondering if one could make a channel that spits out single nucleotides when illuminated, or maybe use a neuron that blebs out a vesicle with just one nucleotide in it. (in effort of directed DNA synthesis)
-Nathan
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