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These are the lead authors of the two papers described in the news report, Lukas Pfeifer (left) and Ryojun Toyoda
.
They have all succeeded in manufacturing fluorescent-driven molecular motors
.
This is the first time that two photochemical properties
have been combined in one motor molecule.
The rotary molecular motor was first invented
in 1999 in the laboratory of Ben Feringaga, professor of organic chemistry at the University of Groningen.
These motors are driven
by light.
For a number of reasons, it would
be great to make these motor molecules visible.
The best way to do this is to let them fluoresce.
However, combining two light-mediated functions in one molecule is quite challenging
.
Feringa Labs has now succeeded in doing this
in two different ways.
"After the successful design of molecular motors over the past few decades, an important next goal is to use this motor to control various functions and properties," explains Feringa
, co-winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
"Since these are light-driven rotary motors, designing a system that can be controlled by light energy in addition to rotational motion is particularly challenging
.
"
Feringa and his team are particularly interested in fluorescence because it is a major technique widely used for detection, such as in
biomedical imaging.
As a rule, two such photochemical events are incompatible in the same molecule; Either the light-driven motor works without fluorescence or there is a fluorescent motor that does not work
.
Feringa: "We have now shown that these two functions can exist in parallel in the same molecular system, which is quite unique
.
"
Ryojun Toyoda, a postdoctoral researcher in Feringa's team and now a professor at Tohoku University in Japan, added fluorescent dyes to the classic Feringa rotary motor with the trick of preventing the two functions from blocking
each other.
He managed to eliminate the direct interaction
between the dye and the motor.
This is done by placing the dye perpendicular to the upper part of the motor to which it is connected
.
In this way, fluorescence and the rotation function of the motor can coexist
.
In addition, by changing the solvent, he can adjust the system: "By changing the polarity of the solvent, the balance
between the two functions can be changed.
This means that the motor becomes sensitive to the environment, which may point the way
to future applications.
”
Co-author Shirin Faraji, professor of theoretical chemistry at the University of Groningen, helped explain how this happened
.
Kiana Moghaddam, a postdoc in her team, performed numerous quantum mechanical calculations and demonstrated how the key energies that control the kinetics of light excitation are strongly dependent on solvent polarity
.
Another useful property of this fluorescent motor molecule is that different dyes can attach to it as long as the structure is similar
.
"Therefore, it is relatively easy
to make engines with different colors of starting light," Toyoda said.
The second fluorescence motor was built by Lukas Pfeifer, a postdoctoral researcher in Feringa's group: "My solution is based on a motor molecule I've already made, which is driven
by two low-energy near-infrared photons.
Motors driven by near-infrared light are useful in biological systems because this light penetrates tissues deeper than visible light and does less
damage to tissues than ultraviolet light.
I added an antenna to the motor molecule that collects the energy of two infrared photons and transmits it to the motor
.
During the study, we found that with some modifications, the antenna can also produce fluorescence
.
"The results show that molecules can have two different excited states: in one state, energy is transferred to the motor part and drives rotation, while in the other state, the molecules fluoresce
In the case of the second motor, the entire molecule fluoresces
.
Spectroscopic analysis of two fluorescence motors was performed
.
"This motor is a chemical entity whose wave function is not fixed, and depending on the energy level, it will have two different effects
.
By changing the wavelength of light, and thus the energy received by the molecule, you can get rotation or fluorescence
.
Now that the team has combined motion and fluorescence in the same molecule, the next step will be to show motion and simultaneously detect the position of
the molecule by tracking fluorescence.
Feringa: "It's very powerful, and we can use it to show how these motors move through the cell membrane or move within the cell, because fluorescence is a widely used technique to show where molecules are in
the cell.
" We can also use it to track motion caused by photodynamic motors, such as on nanoscale trajectories, or to track transmissions
caused by motors at the nanoscale.
This is all part of the
follow-up research.
”
Dual-function artificial molecular motors performing rotation and photoluminescence
