photochemical reaction

Chemical reaction initiated by absorption of energy in the form of visible (light), ultraviolet, or infrared radiation.

Primary photochemical processes occur as an immediate result, and secondary processes may follow. The most important example is photosynthesis. Vision depends on photochemical reactions that occur in the eye (see retina; rhodopsin). In photographic film and paper, light activates their silver salts to a state that is easy to reduce to metallic silver grains during development. Bleaching of laundry, tanning of human skin, formation of Earth's ozone layer, and many industrial reactions are also photochemical. Certain air pollutants (see smog) become more reactive and form noxious compounds in photochemical reactions.

* * *

▪ chemical reaction

Introduction

 a chemical reaction initiated by the absorption of energy in the form of light. The consequence of molecules (molecule)' absorbing light is the creation of transient excited states whose chemical and physical properties differ greatly from the original molecules. These new chemical species can fall apart, change to new structures, combine with each other or other molecules, or transfer electrons (electron), hydrogen atoms (atom), protons (proton), or their electronic excitation energy to other molecules. Excited states are stronger acids (acid) and stronger reductants than the original ground states.

 It is this last property that is crucial in the most important of all photochemical processes, photosynthesis, upon which almost all life on Earth depends. Through photosynthesis, plants (plant) convert the energy of sunlight into stored chemical energy by forming carbohydrates (carbohydrate) from atmospheric carbon dioxide and water and releasing molecular oxygen as a byproduct. Both carbohydrates and oxygen are needed to sustain animal life. Many other processes in nature are photochemical. The ability to see (vision) the world starts with a photochemical reaction in the eye (eye, human), in which retinal, a molecule in the photoreceptor cell rhodopsin, isomerizes (or changes shape) about a double bond after absorbing light. vitamin D, essential for normal bone and teeth (tooth) development and kidney function, is formed in the skin of animals after exposure of the chemical 7-dehydrocholesterol to sunlight. ozone protects Earth's surface from intense, deep ultraviolet (UV) irradiation (ultraviolet radiation), which is damaging to DNA and is formed in the stratosphere by a photochemical dissociation (separation) of molecular oxygen (O₂) into individual oxygen atoms, followed by subsequent reaction of those oxygen atoms with molecular oxygen to produce ozone (O₃). UV radiation that does get through the ozone layer photochemically damages DNA, which in turn introduces mutations (mutation) on its replication that can lead to skin cancer.

 Photochemical reactions and the properties of excited states are also critical in many commercial processes and devices. Photography (photography, technology of) and xerography (electrophotography) are both based upon photochemical processes, while the manufacture of semiconductor chips (chip) or the preparation of masks for printing newspapers (newspaper) relies on UV light to destroy molecules in selected regions of polymer masks.

History

      The use of photochemistry by humans began in the late Bronze Age by 1500 BCE when Canaanite peoples settled the eastern coastline of the Mediterranean. They prepared a purple fast dye (now called 6,6'-dibromoindigotin) from a local mollusk, using a photochemical reaction, and its use was later mentioned in Iron Age documents that described earlier times, such as the epics of Homer and the Pentateuch. In fact, the word Canaan may mean “reddish purple.” This dye, known as Tyrian purple, was later used to colour the cloaks of the Roman Caesars.

      In the simplest photochemical process, excited states can emit light in the form of fluorescence or phosphorescence. In 1565, while investigating a Mexican wood that relieved the excruciating pain of urinary stones, Spanish physician Nicolás Monardes made an aqueous (water-based) extract of the wood, which glowed blue when exposed to sunlight. In 1853 English physicist George Stokes (Stokes, Sir George Gabriel, 1st Baronet) noticed that a quinine solution exposed to a lightning flash gave off a brief blue glow, which he called fluorescence. Stokes realized that lightning gave off energy in the form of UV light. The quinine molecules (molecule) absorbed this energy and then reemitted it as less-energetic blue radiation. (Tonic water also glows blue because of quinine, which is added to provide a bitter taste.)

      In the 16th century Florentine sculptor Benvenuto Cellini (Cellini, Benvenuto) recognized that a diamond exposed to sunlight and then placed into the shade gave off a blue glow that lasted for many seconds. This process is called phosphorescence and is distinguished from fluorescence by the length of time it persists. Synthetic inorganic phosphors (phosphor) were prepared in 1603 by cobbler-alchemist Vincenzo Cascariolo of Bologna by reducing the natural mineral barium sulfate with charcoal to synthesize barium sulfide. Exposure to sunlight caused the phosphor to emit a long-lived yellow glow, and it was sufficiently regarded that many traveled to Bologna to collect the mineral (called Bologna stones (Bologna stone)) and make their own phosphor. Subsequent work by Italian astronomer Niccolò Zucchi (Zucchi, Niccolò) in 1652 demonstrated that the phosphorescence is emitted at longer wavelengths than needed to excite the phosphor; for instance, blue phosphorescence follows UV excitation in diamonds. In addition, in 1728 Italian physicist Francesco Zanotti showed that phosphorescence keeps the same colour even when the colour of the excitation radiation is altered to increasing energy. These same properties are also true of fluorescence.

      The modern era of organic photochemistry began in 1866, when Russian chemist Carl Julius von Fritzche discovered that a concentrated anthracene solution exposed to UV (ultraviolet radiation) radiation would fall from the solution as a precipitate. This precipitation happens because the anthracene molecules join together in pairs, or dimers, which are no longer soluble.

      In the 19th and early 20th centuries, scientists developed a fundamental understanding of the basis for fluorescence and phosphorescence. The foundation was the realization that the materials (dyes and phosphors) must have the capability of absorbing optical radiation (the Grotthus-Draper law). German chemist Robert Bunsen (Bunsen, Robert Wilhelm) and English chemist Henry Roscoe demonstrated in 1859 that the amount of fluorescence or phosphorescence was determined by the total amount of optical radiation absorbed and not the energy content (i.e., the wavelength, colour, or frequency) of the radiation. In 1908 German physicist Johannes Stark (Stark, Johannes) realized that absorption of radiation was a consequence of a quantum (quantum chromodynamics) transition, and this was further extended by German physicist Albert Einstein (Einstein, Albert) in 1912 to include the conservation of energy (energy, conservation of)—the internal energy introduced to the molecule by absorption must be equal to the total of the energies of each individual process of energy dissipation. Implicit in the previous sentence is the photochemical equivalence law, also called the Stark-Einstein law, which states that a single molecule may absorb exactly one photon of light. The amount of energy absorbed by a substance is the product of the number of photons absorbed and the energy of each photon, but it is the radiation intensity and the number of absorbed photons per second, and not their energy, that determine the extent of photochemical processes.

      The contemporary quantum mechanical (quantum mechanics) description of the absorption of optical radiation involves promotion of an electron from a low-energy orbital to a more energetic orbital. This is synonymous with saying that the molecule (or atom) is promoted from its ground state (or lowest energy state) to an excited state (or higher energy state). This excited-state molecule often has drastically different properties from the ground-state molecule. In addition, a molecule's excited state is short-lived because a sequence of events will either return it to its original ground state or form a new chemical species that will eventually reach its own ground state.

Consequences of photoexcitation

      The chemical nature of a molecule is primarily described by the behaviour of its electrons (electron). An important facet of quantum mechanics is that the total energy of a molecule's electrons (its electronic energy) can take on only certain distinct values; the energy is said to be quantized. Each distinct energy corresponds to an electronic state of the molecule. Electronic states are described by a series of quantum numbers that specify the orbital each electron is in and the intrinsic “ spin” of each electron. The electron's spin, which does not literally correspond to rotation, has only two possible values—referred to as up and down. Each orbital can contain only one electron of each spin; this is called the Pauli exclusion principle. If every occupied (or electron-containing) orbital holds a pair of electrons with opposing spin, the molecule is in a singlet state, which is the pattern for the ground state of most molecules. When the molecule is excited (e.g., by absorption of a photon), one electron is promoted to a previously unoccupied orbital, and, if its spin does not change, then the two (now unpaired) electrons still have opposing spin and the molecule is still in a singlet state. However, occasionally an electron's spin will flip when it is excited such that the two unpaired electrons now have parallel spins and the molecule is in a triplet state. A change in intrinsic electron spin is not very probable, so conversion of a molecule from singlet to triplet or vice versa is slow compared with other molecular processes.

      The internal energy absorbed from the exciting radiation is lost by either a radiative transition (fluorescence or phosphorescence) or a nonradiative process. The nonradiative processes are internal conversion, which involves electronic states of the same electron spin, intersystem crossing, which involves states of different electron spin, or chemistry.

      It is worth noting that, in addition to electrons, the behaviour of the nuclei (nucleus) is also important in describing the behaviour of the molecule. Motions (kinetic energy) of the nuclei relative to each other are usually described as vibrations (vibration), and, just as with electronic energy, the total vibrational energy in a molecule is quantized. However, the vibrational states of a molecule are spaced much more closely than the electronic states. Thus, the total energy of a molecule is coarsely defined by its electronic state and more finely by its vibrational state. Other types of energy with even more finely spaced states exist but are not discussed here.

       quantum mechanics explains internal conversion as a transfer of excess electronic energy into excess vibrational energy of a lower electronic state, followed by dissipation of the vibrational energy into the surroundings as heat. The higher excited singlet states (S₂, S₃, and so on, often generally denoted S_n) internally convert rapidly to S₁, the excited state with the lowest energy. Internal conversion from S₁ to S₀, the lowest-energy (or ground) state, is much slower, allowing time for the molecule to either emit a photon (fluorescence), intersystem cross to a triplet state that rapidly internally converts to T₁ (the lowest-energy triplet state), or undergo a chemical reaction. The T₁ level can internally convert to S₀, emit a photon ( phosphorescence), or take part in a chemical reaction. This method of accessing the triplet states (intersystem crossing from S₁) is the most common, though they can also be reached through an extremely weak (that is, improbable) absorption from the ground state directly to the triplets. Because the unpaired electrons of triplet states (with parallel spins) interact more strongly than those of singlet states (with opposing spins), the energy difference T₁ − S₀ is less than S₁ − S₀, and phosphorescence occurs at longer wavelengths than fluorescence. Also, the low probability of a spin change results in the long-lived nature of phosphorescence observed by Cellini (Cellini, Benvenuto) in 1568 or in glow-in-the-dark products common today. Because internal conversion is rapid, fluorescence usually occurs only from S₁ (this is called Kasha's rule), though a small number of molecules are known that emit from their S₂ (azulene) or S₃ (pentalene) states.

      Both singlet and triplet excited states are distinct in nature and have completely new properties, including bond length and conformation (molecular geometry or shape), among others. Because the electrons have a much smaller mass than the nuclei, absorption of light involves an almost instantaneous change in the electron configuration, while the nuclei initially remain in their ground-state positions. Relaxation of the nuclei toward their new excited-state positions lowers the total energy. This relaxation, called the Stokes shift (Stokes lines), is why fluorescence emits with a lower energy than the original absorption. It is notable that this relaxation occurs within a single electronic state and so applies when both the absorption and fluorescence involve the S₁ and S₀ states.

      The quantum yield of luminescence, either fluorescence or phosphorescence, is the fraction of the absorbed radiation that appears as that luminescence. Quantum yields are less than 100 percent owing to nonradiative processes (e.g., internal conversion) that dissipate the excess internal energy acquired from the absorbed photon. This energy appears as heat.

      All these events take place over a wide variety of times, most of which are extraordinarily fast by human standards. Internal conversion and transfer of excess vibrational energy to the surroundings occur in 30–300 femtoseconds (fs; 1 fs is 10⁻¹⁵ second). The S₁ state typically exists for 1–100 nanoseconds (ns; 1 ns is 10⁻⁹ second), but if photochemistry occurs, it can exist for less than 100 fs. Intersystem crossing (from S₁ to T_n) occurs in 100 picoseconds (ps; 1 ps is 10⁻¹² second) to 100 ns. The T₁ state, in contrast, radiates in 1 millisecond (ms; 1 ms is 1/1,000 second) to 10 seconds, or even longer in extreme cases.

      Unraveling all these processes requires observing the evolution of absorption and emission (secondary emission) spectra over time. The excited singlet and triplet states may also absorb radiation and reach higher excited electronic levels. In general, this transient absorption spectrum is different from the absorption of the ground state, which allows monitoring of the time evolution of the excited states. This is accomplished by a sequence of optical pulses: first an intense radiation pulse that creates an excited singlet state and, after a delay, a second, weaker pulse at a different wavelength, or range of wavelengths, that probes the transient absorption. Early experiments of this type were pioneered in the late 1940s by English chemists R.G.W. Norrish (Norrish, Ronald George Wreyford) and Sir George Porter (Porter, Sir George, Baron Porter of Luddenham), who were awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1967. Called flash photolysis, these experiments used flash lamps (flash lamp) to provide short (millisecond to microsecond) pulses of light and were often used to study photolysis (see below Photodissociation (photochemical reaction)). Modern experimentalists study all types of photochemical reactions by using lasers (laser), which allow measurements to be made with a time resolution as short as 10 fs. In addition to corresponding methods used with fluorescence and phosphorescence, modern techniques sometimes use several light pulses to obtain more detailed information about the excited states of molecules and their interaction with the surrounding protein or solvent.

luminescence

      Luminescence is the emission (secondary emission) of light by certain materials when they are relatively cool. Examples of luminescence are found in both natural and man-made systems. jellyfish give off a green glow from fluorescence of a protein called green fluorescent protein (GFP), which is excited through a chemical reaction (see below Chemiluminescence (photochemical reaction)). The gene sequence for GFP can be inserted into the DNA of an organism and thereby confer a new property, the ability to emit green fluorescence. For instance, the GFP gene can be inserted into mouse DNA adjacent to the gene for cancerous liver cells. Such a mouse radiates green fluorescence from its cancerous liver (liver cancer). Proteins similar to GFP have been found in corals (coral) that emit blue, yellow, and red fluorescence, offering a rich colour palette for exploring the functioning of cells.

      There are many industrial needs for luminescence. Engineers measure the air pressure at all points over the surface of a model of a space shuttle wing by using a phosphorescent paint. The phosphors in the paint are excited and eventually reach their T₁ states, from which they can phosphoresce and be observed. In areas of high pressure, oxygen in the paint accepts the T₁ electronic energy from the excited paint molecules (see below Photosensitization (photochemical reaction)), shortening their lifetime and reducing the amount of phosphorescence. The lifetime of the phosphorescent molecules is longer in areas of low pressure because there is less oxygen in the paint. Use of this special paint eliminates the need for the laborious installation of pressure sensors and is also used by the automotive and airline industries.

       materials science uses phosphors for display screens. By combining all possible mixtures of metal oxides (oxide), a vast array of different coloured phosphors is created. Fluorophores are added to paper and washing powder to enhance the appearance of whiteness by absorbing UV light and then fluorescing blue.

photosensitization

      When a second molecule is located near an electronically excited molecule, the excitation can be transferred from one to the other through space. If the second molecule is chemically different, there can be a substantial change in the luminescence. For example, the chemiluminescence of a jellyfish is actually blue, but, because the energy is transferred to GFP, the observed fluorescence is green.

      Photosensitized molecular oxygen is a powerfully oxidative species that severely hampers the photosynthetic efficiency of plants (plant) and causes health problems such as cataracts (cataract) in humans. The ground state of molecular oxygen is very unusual in that it is a triplet; hence, it can accept electronic energy from more-energetic triplet states of other molecules in a process called quenching (as in the case of the space shuttle wing described above). When this occurs, the donor molecule begins in its triplet state and undergoes a change in spin to its singlet ground state. The molecular oxygen begins in its triplet ground state and also changes spin to a singlet excited state. Because the total spin between the two molecules is unchanged, the transfer of energy can occur rapidly and efficiently. The resulting molecular oxygen singlet state phosphoresces in the far red and the near infrared. Moreover, it is both a strong oxidant and peroxidant and, if formed, may chemically attack (oxidize) a nearby molecule, often the same molecule that sensitized the molecular oxygen. The oxidation reaction often changes the molecule to a form without colour. This light-induced bleaching (one kind of photodamage) can be observed in nearly any coloured material left in sunlight. In fact, the photosynthetic systems in plants must be continuously dismantled, repaired, and rebuilt because of photodamage (primarily from singlet molecular oxygen).

      Some organisms use photodamage to their advantage. A remarkably effective plant-pathogenic fungus, Cercospora, produces a pigment that efficiently sensitizes singlet molecular oxygen. Peroxidation of the plant cell membrane causes the cells (cell) of the infected plants to burst, giving nutrients to the fungus.

chemiluminescence

      Chemical reactions can leave a molecule with enough internal energy to produce fluorescence and phosphorescence, called chemiluminescence. Deep-sea explorers remark on the eerie red glow in the gloom of the ocean abyss given off by volcanic vents called “black smokers.” This is phosphorescence from singlet molecular oxygen excited by a chemical reaction with sulfur compounds in seawater. A familiar example is the glow sticks that are popular at nighttime entertainments.

      Many living organisms give off a chemiluminescence, which is often called bioluminescence. A familiar example is the yellow flash of a firefly. In the firefly the chemical compound luciferin is converted by the enzyme luciferase into an intermediate compound (chemical intermediate). The newly formed intermediate compound spontaneously degrades into oxyluciferin and carbon dioxide while emitting a photon of light. Other examples of bioluminescence include the yellow glow of the ocean waves at night from ubiquitous marine bacteria and the South American railroad worm (glowworm), which has a female larval form with a red bioluminescent glow at its head and a series of green glowing spots along its body.

Photoprotection

      Photoprotection involves the nonradiative dissipation of excess electronic energy to avoid damaging chemical processes from the excited state. The simplest example is a molecule (such as a carotenoid) that has highly efficient internal conversion so that the other competing processes (fluorescence, intersystem crossing, and photochemistry) are negligible. The absorbed energy is simply dissipated as heat.

      In DNA, absorption of UV light (ultraviolet radiation) yields an excited singlet state on one base of the DNA. This excited base can undergo a chemical reaction, called 2 + 2 cyclophotoaddition, with a nearby base that fuses the two together into a dimer. It is a remarkable aspect of the right-handed helical conformation of DNA that this photodimer does not cause dramatic changes in the shape of the helix. However, this defect in the DNA strand may eventually lead to a mutation and induce cancer or cell death (apoptosis). Fortunately, rapid internal conversion is an inherent property of the heterocyclic bases that make up DNA and is the primary basis for protection of DNA against damage. In addition, when skin is exposed to intense optical radiation, organelles called melanocytes begin to multiply and migrate and also begin the synthesis of melanin granules that darken the skin and reduce the amount of UV light reaching the underlying DNA.

      Perhaps the most ubiquitous photoprotectants in nature are the carotenoids (carotenoid). They provide essential protection to all known photosynthetic organisms, as well as to the eyes (eye, human) of animals. Carotenoids make ideal photoprotectant molecules because they possess rapid internal conversion from all states, including from S₁ to S₀ (1–100 ps, depending on the carotenoid), and because fluorescence from their S₁ states is not allowed. Thus, all possible outlets for electronic excitation are effectively shut off except for dissipation of the energy as heat.

      More critical is the fact that the T₁ energy of all biologically important carotenoids, such as beta-carotene, lies below the S₁ energy of molecular oxygen. Thus, carotenoids are unable to sensitize singlet molecular oxygen and actually quench it, dissipating the energy safely as heat and leaving harmless ground-state molecular oxygen. This antioxidant effect (antioxidant) also protects animals and plants from singlet molecular oxygen generated during biological processes and is the reason for the large medical interest in carotenoids. In addition, carotenoids quench other molecules in their T₁ states, preventing the formation of singlet molecular oxygen. This explains the vast quantity of carotenoids found in photosynthetic systems and in the retina, where continuous photoexcitation unavoidably generates large numbers of triplet states.

      A commercial example of the need for photoprotection is the yellowing of wood and paper due to sunlight. Paper contains the chemical lignin. A photoreaction converts a lignin derivative into a benzofuran, which gives a yellow coloration.

Photodissociation

      One type of photochemical reaction is the dissociation of a molecule into two fragments (photo-ionization). Since it is the electrons that provide the bonding forces that hold atoms together into molecules, if the distribution of electrons within a molecule changes drastically, the bonding forces may also change. In photodissociation, also called photolysis, the absorption of light raises the molecule into an excited state in which one of the chemical bonds (chemical bonding) no longer exists. Thus, absorption of light causes cleavage of a chemical bond and the release of two fragments called radicals (radical) because they each have enough electrons to form half of a chemical bond and are generally quite reactive.

 The most prevalent example of photodissociation involves molecular oxygen in the stratosphere. Even though the molecular oxygen absorption between 180 and 240 nanometres (nm; 1 nm is 10⁻⁹ metre) is extremely weak, it is able to drive this process because of the large amount of molecular oxygen in the stratosphere and the many photons in this region of the solar spectrum. In the reaction, molecular oxygen is fragmented into two oxygen atom radicals (radical), which react with other oxygen molecules to form ozone. This ozone constitutes the ozone layer (ozonosphere), which absorbs photons strongly at 180–280 nm, thereby protecting organisms on the surface of Earth from most of the damaging UV light from the Sun.

Photoisomerization

      In photoisomerization no chemical bonds are broken, but the molecule changes shape. For example, absorption of optical radiation by a stilbene molecule converts the central double bond from trans to cis. As in photodissociation, this is caused by the electron distribution in the excited state being quite different from that in the ground state; hence, the structure of the initially created excited singlet (by absorption of light) is most stable at 90°, or halfway between the cis and trans forms. The molecule attempts to adopt this conformation by rotating about the double bond until the shape of its nuclei matches the distribution of its electrons. Internal conversion occurs most efficiently from this point where the S₀ and S₁ energies are close. Thus, within one or a few molecular vibrations (30–100 fs), the molecule returns to the S₀ state with excess vibrational energy. However, the 90° twist of the double bond is the least-stable conformation for the electron distribution of the S₀ state, so the molecule again rotates about the double bond. Rotation can either continue in the same direction, forming the new isomer, or go back, forming the original isomer. In reality the motions of the molecule are more complicated than described here, involving simultaneous rotation about multiple bonds. However, this simple description contains the essence of the process.

      The primary step in vision is the photoisomerization of a retinol ( vitamin A) molecule bound within a specialized protein (opsin). The visual pigment (e.g., retinal) and the protein together constitute one of a large family of membrane-bound photoreceptors, or rhodopsins (rhodopsin). These protein-pigment complexes are responsible for all of the body's responses to light, including vision, growth and division of melanocytes (tanning), regulation of circadian rhythms (the body's 24-hour cycle), opening and closing of the iris, and others. The active centre of rhodopsin is found in rod cells of the retina. The retinal molecule has several conjugated double bonds, which are all trans except for one in the cis conformation. This single cis bond photoisomerizes rapidly and efficiently to trans, driving a change in the protein structure that then initiates a cascade of events leading eventually to a nerve impulse.

 Rod cells are the most sensitive to light, but all absorb at the same wavelength, which does not allow colours to be distinguished. In contrast, there are three types of cone cells, each containing a different rhodopsin that absorbs at a slightly different wavelength, enabling colour vision. Remarkably, all cones and rods contain the same retinal chromophore; small differences in the protein shift the rhodopsin absorption (the energy difference between S₁ and S₀) to different colours. In fact, all known animal photoreceptors use retinal as their chromophore. It absorbs light strongly, and, when incorporated into protein, its absorption matches the solar spectrum closely, so it is sensitive in very low light. Also, it is quite stable, so spontaneous isomerization, which would cause false images, almost never occurs. The structural change in the protein upon isomerization is quite large.

Photorearrangement

      In photorearrangement, absorption of light causes a molecule to rearrange its structure in such a way that atoms are lost and it becomes another chemical species. One biologically important photorearrangement reaction is the conversion of 7-dehydrocholesterol to vitamin D in the skin. Lack of exposure to solar radiation can cause a deficiency of vitamin D, which leads to a debilitating decalcification of the bones (bone) called rickets. This disorder was first described by Roman physicians in the 2nd century BCE, and, at the height of the Industrial Revolution, it affected 90 percent of children raised in the crowded cities of Europe and North America. Early in the 19th century it was recognized that rickets could be prevented by exposure to sunlight, and this practice became widely adopted at the beginning of the 20th century as an effective treatment.

      Plants in the human diet contribute 7-dehydrocholesterol, which accumulates in cholesterol-rich rafts in the plasma membrane of skin cells. While in the skin, 7-dehydrocholesterol absorbs UV (ultraviolet radiation) light (about 300 nm), leading to the photorearrangement. In this reaction the bond between one carbon and one hydrogen atom is eliminated, while simultaneously the same hydrogen atom forms a bond to a new carbon atom, resulting in the molecule cholecalciferol, or vitamin D₃.

      Though it is not biologically active itself, cholecalciferol is converted by the liver and the kidneys (kidney) into several forms of vitamin D with various metabolic roles, including regulating calcium (Ca²⁺) levels in the intestine, kidney, liver, and bone and controlling differentiation of hematopoetic cells in bone marrow to macrophages and osteoclasts (osteoclast) for bone formation. It is also an antiproliferative agent for breast (breast cancer) and colon carcinomas (carcinoma), lymphomas (lymphoma), and leukemias (leukemia).

Photochemical steps in photosynthesis

      The energy in radiation (electromagnetic radiation) from the Sun that reaches the surface of Earth is stored as energy-rich chemicals (such as glucose) by green plants (plant), algae, and certain bacteria. Most life on Earth derives its nutrition from this photochemical process called photosynthesis, in which over 3 × 10¹¹ metric tons of carbon are changed into carbohydrates (carbohydrate) each year. The engine that drives this process is a complex of proteins (protein) and pigments (pigment), the photosynthetic unit, arranged into an apparatus within a membrane. In this cellular machine is a reaction centre that contains the natural pigments chlorophylls (chlorophyll) and carotenoids (carotenoid). Light is absorbed, and the resulting singlet excitation energy is directed to reach a special pair of chlorophyll molecules (molecule) situated in the reaction centre, which is very close to one side of the membrane. The excited singlet of the chlorophyll pair is a strong reductant and transfers an electron (in what is called a charge-transfer reaction) to an adjacent pigment molecule to create a pigment anion (a negatively charged ion) and chlorophyll pair cation (a positively charged ion). The reaction centre is beautifully designed so that the electron continues to move from pigment to pigment, always farther from the chlorophyll pair, until it reaches a transport molecule called a quinone, located at the opposite side of the membrane. The quinone returns the electron back across the membrane but takes a hydrogen ion (H⁺) along with it. This transport of H⁺ across the membrane happens again and again, always in the same direction, creating an abundance of hydrogen ions on one side of the membrane and a shortage on the other. The final result is that light energy is converted to a difference in charge (electric charge) across the membrane; this difference is stored electrical energy, somewhat analogous to a battery. Further photosynthetic processes, which do not require sunlight, use this energy to generate the high-energy chemical species that sustain the plant, as well as those organisms that consume it.

      Though the reaction centre is wonderfully efficient at converting electronic excitation into stored electrical energy, it is not effective at absorbing sunlight. Thus, surrounding the reaction centre is an array of pigment-protein complexes that function as an antenna to absorb sunlight and transfer the resulting electronic excitation efficiently to the reaction centre. These light-harvesting antenna are densely packed with pigments (chlorophylls and carotenoids) designed to absorb at many different colours throughout the solar spectrum. As is typical for photosynthetic organisms, 200–300 chlorophyll molecules act as light-harvesting antennae for each reaction centre. These chlorophyll molecules are susceptible to photodamage from photosensitized singlet molecular oxygen, but they are protected by carotenoids (photoprotection). The carotenoids also act as light harvesters, absorbing radiation in the blue and green-orange where chlorophyll has little absorption, and transfer this electronic energy to chlorophyll for its eventual delivery to the reaction centre.

Graham R. Fleming James Longworth Brent P. Krueger

Additional Reading

Carol E. Wayne and Richard P. Wayne, Photochemistry (1999), is a basic introduction containing a good description of atmospheric photochemistry. Nicholas J. Turro, Modern Molecular Photochemistry (1991), is a broad overview of organic photochemistry at an accessible level. Josef Michl and Vlasta Bonacic-Koutecky, Electronic Aspects of Organic Photochemistry (1990), provides good coverage of the theoretical foundations of photochemistry. William M. Horspool and Francesco Lenci (eds.), CRC Handbook of Organic Photochemistry and Photobiology, 2nd ed. (2004), is a comprehensive compendium emphasizing the synthetic value of photochemistry.Graham R. Fleming James Longworth Brent P. Krueger

* * *