Automated screening for biological weapons in homeland defense.

Biological threat detection programs that collect air samples and monitor for large-scale release of biowarfare agents generate large numbers of samples that must be quickly and accurately screened for the presence of biological agents. An impediment to the rapid analysis of large numbers of environmental biological samples is that manual laboratory processes are time-consuming and require resources to maintain infrastructure, trained personnel, and adequate supplies of testing reagents. An ideal screening system would be capable of processing multiple samples rapidly, cost-effectively, and with minimal personnel.

Holographic properties of Triton X-100-treated bacteriorhodopsin embedded in gelatin films.

Bacteriorhodopsin (b) thin films have been fabricated with varying amounts of the detergent Triton X-100 to measure the effect of this additive on the holographic performance of these thin films. Holographic spectroscopy is used to measure the effect of these detergents on the overall diffraction efficiency as well as on the phase and amplitude components of the overall signal. The diffracted rise and decay kinetics of these materials will also be presented as a function of varying detergent concentration.

Molecular computing for edge-enhanced laser imaging.

In order to illustrate the self-assembly capability, we consider a laser imaging experiment on a wet film that is made of bacteriorhodopsin (BR) molecules suspended in a diffusion-limited viscous medium. BR wet film is similar to a wet photograph film but having a finer resolution and adaptive pixel locations due to laser-induced thermal diffusion. The synergism between thermal diffusion of BR molecules (induced externally by a write-laser) and molecular photochromism (generated internally by a read-laser) is exploited naturally for edge-enhanced image applications.