Time-resolved circular dichroism: Application to the study of conformal changes in biomolecules

Circular dichroism (CD) is known to be a very sensitive probe of the conformation of molecules and biomolecules. It is therefore tempting to implement CD in a pump-probe experiment in order to measure ultrarapid conformational changes which occur in photochemical processes. We present two technic...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Hache F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: EDP Sciences 2010-06-01
Series:EPJ Web of Conferences
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/20100503003
Description
Summary:Circular dichroism (CD) is known to be a very sensitive probe of the conformation of molecules and biomolecules. It is therefore tempting to implement CD in a pump-probe experiment in order to measure ultrarapid conformational changes which occur in photochemical processes. We present two technical developments of such time-resolved CD experiments. The first one relies on the modulation of the probe polarization from left to right circular whereas the second one measures the pump-induced ellipticity of the probe with a Babinet-Soleil compensator. Some applications are described and extension of these techniques towards the study of elementary protein folding processes is discussed.
ISSN:2100-014X