Deciphering Bioelectricity Mechanisms: Synthetic Protein Nanowires to Study Biological Charge Diffusion

Bacteria use conductive protein wires to link their metabolic activities to external redox sources. Deciphering their mechanisms of assembly and conductance, as well as the design of artificial protein nanowires, has been hampered by the lack of tools to modulate nanowire structure and composition. The project will establish a modular design strategy to assemble nanowires with defined protein building blocks and measure conduction mechanisms using single-molecule electronics tools. Using orthogonal split inteins, protein nanowires will be synthesized with tunable redox potentials. Chemical control of the synthetic protein wires will enable identification of key structural details leading to the observed highly efficient electron transport characteristic of bioelectricity, including: optimal distance between metal redox cofactors, supramolecular interactions in the folded structure and chirality effects.