Application of time-resolved circular dichroism to the study of conformational changes in photochemical and photobiological processes

Circular dichroism is known to be a very sensitive probe of the molecular conformation and implementation of this technique in a pump-probe experiment is very appealing to access information on the dynamics of conformational changes occurring in photochemical or photobiological processes. In the past years, we have developed such techniques in various ways and applied them to several chemical or biological studies which are presented in this article. Applications concern spectroscopic studies of the excited state in ruthenium tris(bipyridyl) or tris(phenanthroline), dynamics of conformational changes in photoexcited binaphthol and study of the conformational changes occurring in photolyzed carboxy-myoglobin. Extension of these techniques towards biological issues such as protein folding is discussed.