Flash Photolysis And Pulse Radiolysis

Flash Photolysis and Pulse Radiolysis: Contributions to the Chemistry of Biology and Medicine presents the interaction of radiation with biomolecules, which is either beneficial o deleterious to life. This book discusses the biochemical reactions that are not radiation-induced by selectively generating certain types of free radicals present in normal metabolic processes. Organized into nine chapters, this book begins with an overview of the principle of both pulse radiolysis and flash photolysis with photoelectric detection. This text then examines the applications of flash photolysis and pulse radiolysis to the chlorophylls, bile pigments, hemoglobin and myoglobin, and the porphyrins. Other chapters consider the carotenoids related to photosynthesis. This book discusses as well the role of proteins in nearly all biological processes, including enzymatic catalysis, muscular contraction, immune protection, mechanical support, and genetic information. The final chapter deals with the structures and importance of radiosensitizers. This book is a valuable resource for chemists and biochemists.

Bringing together theory and research results in biomedical systems, this book emphasizes the study of short-lived free radical and excited state intermediates with respect to a wide range of biological topics, including cancer, photosynthesis, proteins, carotenoids and reactive oxygen species.

Excited states and free radicals are involved in the normal physiology of living systems, in pathological processes (including lipid peroxidation, inflammation, Parkinson's disease, cancer, and aging), in the mechanisms of drug action, and in the photochemotherapies such as the PUVA therapy for skin diseases and PDT for cancer. This text introduces the reader to this rapidly expanding field, one that lies at the borderlines of physics, chemistry, biology, pharmacology, and medicine. The authors explore in particular how time-resolved spectroscopic methods have found solutions at the molecular level to biological and medical problems. Topics include the nature of excited states and free radicals and the techniques for their study, activated oxygen species, DNA, proteins, carotenoids and photosynthetic reaction centers, photodermatology and melanogenesis, and aspects of cancer related to radio-, chemo-, and photodynamic therapy. Researchers and graduate students in photochemistry, photobiology, photomedicine, radiation chemistry and biology, and cancer therapies will find this book to be of very significant interest.