Multiscale conformational dynamics probed by time-resolved circular dichroism

摘要

Measuring circular dichroism in time-resolved experiments is very promising to investigate the dynamics of conformational changes occurring in chemical or biological processes. This is however very challenging because of the weakness of the signals. Here we present several complementary set-ups which allow us to investigate changes in CD on a large range of timescales, from picoseconds to milliseconds. These set-ups are utilized to probe (i) the dynamics of the dihedral angle in Binaphthol following photoexcitation, (ii) the first step in the photoisomerization process in Photoactive Yellow Protein, and (iii) folding/unfolding processes of DNA G-quadruplexes.