Biological Applications of Femtosecond Infrared Spectroscopy:Ultrafast Pump-Probe Studies of Photoactive Proteins and Membranes |
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Presented by: Dr. Shyamsunder Erramilli |
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Date: Monday, June 16, 2008
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Who should attend this course? |
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| This course will be a 90 minute one day course. Anyone engaged in Optical and spectroscopic techniques in Bioengineering, Physical Chemistry and Biological Physics will find this course useful. The course is aimed at spectroscopists, optical engineers, and physical and biological scientists who have had courses at an advanced undergraduate or beginning masters level, and who wish to acquire an understanding of femtosecond ultrafast infrared spectroscopy. Participants will be encouraged to ask questions. | |
Course Description: |
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| The course will cover the state-of-the-art in ultrafast femtosecond vibrational infrared spectroscopy applied to biomolecular systems. Vibrational spectroscopy is a label-free method for studing biomolecules. Starting from familiar topic of linear spectroscopy, the course will introduce fundamental concepts of femtosecond vibrational spectroscopy, leading to both linear and nonlinear methods. There will be a discussion of instrumentation and experimental methods. A specific application of multicolor pump-probe spectroscopy is to the sub-picosecond photoresponse in a photoactive bacterial membrane protein system. This system will be used to talk about a deep question regarding energy transport in biological systems: Given that membrane proteins pump ions across membranes on millisecond time-scales, why does the initial photoresponse of a protein need to be that fast? Were they engineered by evolution to optimize photoresponse? | |
