Twice in the last month, UT researchers have published articles in the highly revered scientific journal Nature.
In the August 5 issue, a group of researchers led by Professor Willem Vos showed that the transmission of light can be controlled in a photonic crystal. Vos explains why the publication is so important, `In our research field, Complex Photonic Systems, the American Eli Yablonovitch did a fundamental prediction seventeen years ago. At first, no one really believed him. He claimed that the transmission of light could be controlled by placing the light source in a special 3D structure. In 1991, he demonstrated the functioning of the structure for radio waves. A lot of researchers were looking to demonstrate this phenomenon for light waves.'
Three weeks later, biophysicists (including Vos's group) of the University of Twente and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, after directly displaying a photosynthetic bacterial membrane using an Atomic Force Microscope, published their astonishing results in the August 26 issue of Nature.
Raoul Frese, post-grad student at the UT and the VU who co-authored the article, reports, `The unique thing about this research is that for the first time we were able to measure details the size of one billionth of a meter - the dimension of a molecule - in soft, biological material. Until now that was only possible in solids.' Another co-author, Sveta Bahatyrova, adds, `It's an incredible sight when for the first time you produce an image of a membrane that even shows the structure of individual distinct protein complexes!'
Trans. Jeroen Latour
