Professor Roman Tuma

Talk: Modular molecular toolkit for photochemical energy conversion in self-assembling nanocontainers

We engineered a biohybrid device for photochemically driven electron transfer by combining a photosynthetic system with a redox protein inside a self-assembling nanocontainer. The photosynthetic system from the purple bacterium Cereibacter sphaeroides and cytochrome c2 were conjugated to a bacteriophage P22 scaffolding protein and co-incorporated into the 50-nm-diameter capsid shell in vitro. The porous P22 bacteriophage procapsid shell confined the macromolecular components for efficient electron transfer while allowing free exchange of small molecules, e.g. electron mediators. Sustainable light-driven electron transfer between the encapsulated components was confirmed by optical spectroscopy and electrochemical methods.  

This demonstrated that nanoscale confinement of heterologous redox components leads to efficient electron transfer. The results open new avenues for the development of modular nanoreactors that couple redox pathways with photochemical energy conversion to produce high-value chemical products.