CAN A BILE ACID BINDING PROTEIN BE EMPLOYED FOR OPTICAL DEVICE APPLICATIONS?

A driving force to study biomolecular optics is the idea that biological molecules are optimized by evolution and natural selection for given tasks, such as recognition and molecules sequestering, which may be of interest for hosting ?-conjugated organic molecules, generally used as laser dye. Hybrid and biohybrid host-guest materials are considered as one of the main research areas in materials science and technology for developing functional and structural advanced materials. The potential of an intracellular lipid binding protein for optical applications stems from its stability and its versatile binding pocket, capable of hosting a wide variety of exogenous ligands. We report here interaction studies of a bile acid binding protein (BABP) with oxazine-4 (Ox4) and rhodamine-6G (R6G), two well-known cationic laser dyes also used as fluorescent tags.