Excited state dynamics of the carotenoid peridinin

Summary, in English

Carotenoids play a number of roles in living organisms. In addition to their well-know light-harvesting function in photosynthesis, they have also photoprotective and antioxidative functions in various physiological systems. Studies of dynamics of carotenoid excited states have established the following scheme: after excitation of a carotenoid to its S2 state (1Bu+), a fast relaxation to the Si state (2Ag-) occurs on a time scale of 50-300 fs. The S1 state relaxes to its ground state S0 on the time scale of 1-300 ps. Peridinin is a highly substituted carotenoid occurring in some dinoflagellates where it is the principle carotenoid of the water soluble light-harvesting peridinin-chlorophyll-protein (PCP), whose structure has been resolved to 2.0 A. The PCP complex exhibits an exceptional stoichiometry of 8 peridinin and 2 chlorophyll a (Chl-a) molecules. This, together with the unusual carotenoid structure, has initiated several studies focusing on spectroscopic properties of peridinin that revealed unique photo-physical properties of peridinin, are discussed in this chapter.

• Author: Tomas Polivka; Donatas Zigmantas; R-G Hiller; Villy Sundström
• Editor: Monique M Martin; James T Hynes
• Department/s: Chemical Physics
• Publishing year: 2004
• Language: English
• Pages: 445-452
• Publication/Series: Femtochemistry and Femtobiology : Ultrafast Events in Molecular Science VIth International Conference on Femtochemistry Maison de la Chimie, Paris, France July 6-10, 2003
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-044451656-5/50087-6
• Document type: Book chapter
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Topic: Atom and Molecular Physics and Optics
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISBN: 0-444-51656-5; ISBN: 9780444516565