SGER: Excitable Vesicles - A New Platform

University Of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

"SGER: Excitable Vesicles - A New Platform" Electric potential and current are fundamental physical properties through which cells communicate and process information. As such, they are instrumental in controlling many physiological processes, including the beating of the heart, locomotion, and brain function. Using nanotechnology, the investigator intends to engineer hybrid biotic/abiotic vesicles that mimic the production of voltages and currents associated with many living cells. It the intention of this project to use protein technology and artificial membrane engineering to create a new functional device, the Excitable Vesicle (EV). This device will be the first incarnation of a new class of intrinsically smart materials where the "intelligence" of the material emerges out of designed supra molecular interactions resulting from the molecular composition and structure of the material. This multidisciplinary project is ideal for the NSF Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER) program. It provides significant advances in the basic science and engineering and offers an opportunity for far reaching technological impacts. This project will incorporate a number of different biological ion channels into membranes of vesicles formed from synthetic biomimetic copolymers to create a new, intrinsically active material that is electrically self-exciting. By mimicking how information is processed in living systems at the molecular level, it is anticipated that systems of EV's will establish a platform for investigating the genesis of emergent higher order behavior associated with large complexes of electrically active cells. These systems will for the first time demonstrate intrinsic information processing which is a constitutive element of its fundamental material properties. It will produce a platform technology for exploring emergent complexity in a physical system and provides a venue for realizing a long term vision of enabling the creation of new, inventive technologies, such as the fabrication of artificial neural bridges, engineered repair of the cardiac pacemaking system, and the construction of a 3-dimensional, analog bioprocessor. This technology will establish the foundation for creating materials that are "environmentally aware", materials that stochastically process information from its surrounding environment and respond to the information in a complex manner. Initially the focus will be on proving the fundamentals of EV technology generation of action potential, repolarization of EV's, and propagation of signals between vesicles. The project will be facilitated by computer simulations of EV behavior and will likely culminate with the demonstration of EV's that can spontaneously depolarize. These tasks support each other in establishing a platform technology for producing large-scale, integrated complexes of biotic/abiotic Excitable Vesicles. The project is supported by the Chemical and Transport Systems 1414 and 1415 programs, as well as the special accounts of the NSF Nanotechnology Coordinator.