Abstract
Over the last few decades our understanding of the structure and function of biological systems has grown rapidly, The study of the biological photochrome bacteriorhodopsin (BR), which is related to the human visual pigment, is only one of many examples. It has been realized that nature has optimized these systems on a molecular-device level during a long period of evolution. The first aim of this paper is to examine these materials from a technical point of view and to describe how advantage can be taken of these naturally optimized systems as molecular devices in optical applications. The second aim is to demonstrate that controlled modification of BR by means of genetic engineering is a powerful tool for creating new BR variants with a large variety of different photophysical properties.1–3
© 1993 Optical Society of America
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