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When I was still a P.h.D. student at Univerity of Sydney, I was studying the
effect of
climate change induced bleaching of corals. Where corals
expel their symbiotic algae
turn white as a result,
and I was studying this process and I found that
some of the corals that didn't appear so stressed and so bleached were
fluorescent, were glowing in different colors. Fluorescence is absorption up a
particular wavelength
say blue light and then emission of that wavelength from a molecule
at a longer wavelengths, say green or it could be red.
So fluorescence is always
dependent on light going in.
In daylight they fluoresce all the time, they fluoresce in the sea
but we can't see it because the light from the sun that's reflected swamps
fluorescence so we can see that but when we switch off the lights and put the
corals in the dark and turn on the blue light
then you can see that fluorescence.
Certain
discoveries that are only been made in the last couple of years relateing to
these fluorescent proteins
one such discovery relates to electron transfer properties, in the past
scientists thought that those proteins just glowed the in the dark, they didn't
have a particular
function or a particular
affect but a Russian team recently discovered that that's not
quite so
that when we shine light of these proteins
they can donate or accept electrons
and that process is the most fundamental process
in living organisms,
that's how they generate energy.
We can use that,
we can use that in cell biology, in biomedicine, to create
immensely powerful biosensors that will measure things inside living cells.
We can also use that to generate electricity,
corals themselves have structured these protein in a 3-dimensional way to best
modulate and capture lights
and so if we come, if we try and mimic, this whole science is called biomimetics,
copying what nature has produced, we can then produce
better solar energy devices. I think if we know something than we care more about
it, and of course, the reefs at the moment are under stress, they're under
stress from many many different directions: pollution,
climate change,
overfishing
so that if we care as people about
these natural resources then we can influence what happens to those
resources