Cofactor synthesis for bio-inspired de novo design of solar-energy harvesting protein domains

Sammanfattning: The world's population is rapidly increasing and so is the demand for energy. Problems with increased CO2 production and global warming makes the need for clean and cheap energy one of the most important challenges facing the future human society. Solar energy is the most abundant energy source accessible to humankind and this energy could be captured and stored as chemical bonds with a device mimicking the process of light driven photosynthesis in plants. This work explains how an artificial protein could perform charge separation and first trials for synthesis of two different co factors, Azido Viologen and Tetra methyl azido viologen has been carried out. It also suggests a way of attaching the co factors to the protein by incorporating the unnatural amino acid Homopropargylglycine in the protein an use Huisgen cycloaddition for the attachment. Azido Viologen seems to have been successfully synthesized but needs to be further characterized by mass spectrometry and NMR bu the Tetra Methyl Azido Viologen was not. The Homopropargylglycine was not successfully incorporated in the protein but the likely reason for this seems to be the usage of the wrong expression system.