The absorption spectra of 10-(4,6-dichloropyrimidin-5-yl)-5,15-dimesitylcorrole have been studied in 15 solvents. The formation of deprotonated corrole species was found to account for the dramatic changes in the absorption spectra in several solvents. Careful analysis of the relationship between the formation of deprotonated species and solvent properties results in the conclusion that there i...

Folding of newly synthesized proteins is an essential part of protein biosynthesis and misfolding can result in protein aggregation which can also lead to several severe diseases. Protein folding is a highly heterogeneous process and rarely populated intermediate states may play an important role. Single-molecule techniques are ideally suited to resolve these heterogeneities. In this thesis, I ...

Confocal microscopy is based on measurement of intensity of fluorescence originating from a limited volume in the imaged specimen. The intensity is quantized in absolute (albeit arbitrary) units, producing a digital 3D micrograph. Thus, one may obtain quantitative information on local concentration of biomolecules in cells and tissues. This approach requires estimation of precision of light mea...

The interaction of lipase from Candida cylindracea (CCL) with positively charged polymerizable surfactant vesicles was studied by the use of steady-state fluorescence techniques. The phase transition of vesicles composed of nonpolymerized and polymerized N-allylbis[2-(hexadecanoyloxy)ethyl]methylammonium bromide (ABHEMA Br) was determined in the absence of lipase, by measuring the change in flu...

When bleached, aerobically grown cells of Rhodopseudornonas spheroides are transferred to semi-aerobic conditions to induce bacteriochlorophyll synthesis, a new fluorescence band, with a maximum at 790 nm, is observed in addition to the 885 nm emission maximum normally seen in pigmented cells. The 790 nm fluorescence may be due to bacteriochlorophyll which has not been bound into the chromatoph...

Autoionization of Rydberg states of HfF, prepared using the optical-optical double resonance technique, holds promise to create HfF(+) in a particular Zeeman level of a rovibronic state for an electron electric dipole moment search. We characterize a vibronic band of Rydberg HfF at 54 cm(-1) above the lowest ionization threshold and directly probe the state of the ions formed from this vibronic...

Time-resolved fluorescence spectra from the RuN719 dye exhibit very short lifetimes (<30 fs) in solutions, on non-injecting substrates and on injecting ones. This reveals <10 fs intramolecular energy redistribution competing with the injection. We conclude that injection proceeds on a sub-10 fs time scale from non-thermalized levels of the dye.

Various indolylmaleimides (IMs) were synthesized, and their fluorescence (FL) and chemiluminescence (CL) were measured. The substitution at the 2-position of the indole ring and the 3- or 4-position of the maleimide moiety caused an obvious change in the FL and CL of the IMs. An almost on-off switching of the FL of the IMs was observed. The intramolecular charge transfer from the indole moiety ...

Despite the fact that two thirds of all pharmaceuticals today target membrane proteins, we know rather little about them since the complexity of the cell membrane makes membrane proteins difficult to study. Furthermore, since membrane proteins control transport of molecules across cell membranes, it is also difficult to study such transportation processes. In this thesis a method for studying t...

Many fluorescent lipid probes tend to loop back to the membrane interface when attached to a lipid acyl chain rather than embedding deeply into the bilayer. To achieve maximum embedding of BODIPY (4,4-difluoro-4-bora-3a,4a-diaza-s-indacene) fluorophore into the bilayer apolar region, a series of sn-2 acyl-labeled phosphatidylcholines was synthesized bearing 4,4-difluoro-1,3,5,7-tetramethyl-4-bo...