Photobiology articles from across Nature Portfolio

Understanding the stability of the eye lens protein human gamma-D crystallin (HGD) is essential to developing tools to prevent the formation of cataracts, however, structural investigations of the response of HGD to ultraviolet radiation are lacking. Here, the authors use continuous illumination serial crystallography to directly probe the mechanism of R36S HGD in response to ultraviolet radiation damage.

Malakar et al. investigate the photochemical dynamics in the isomerization of bacteriorhodopsin light and dark-adapted forms and in the first photocycle intermediate, K. The results prompt a reevaluation of the counter ion model, revealing that a different protonation then that shown in the classic quadrupole so far considered must be employed to account for the experimental data.

The photochemistry of the pyruvate anion plays an important role in the Earth’s atmosphere and aqueous environments. Here, the authors show that excitation of aqueous pyruvate by 200 nm light leads to decarboxylation with a quantum efficiency of 20%, while excitation by 340 nm light does not cause a reaction.

Controlling excited-state reactivity is a long-standing challenge in photochemistry, as desired pathways may be inaccessible or compete with unwanted channels, which is problematic for applications. Here, the authors show that 2,3,5-trifluorination on the phenolate ring of the green fluorescent protein chromophore leads to both pathway selectivity and doubles the photoisomerization quantum yield.

It is unclear why flying insects congregate around artificial light sources. Here, the authors use high-speed videography and motion-capture, finding that insects fly perpendicular to light sources due to a disruption of the dorsal light response.

Here the authors combine 19 F NMR and femtosecond transient absorption to characterise the structural origin of the multiphasic quenching dynamics in various species of BLUF domains, highlighting the importance of the heterogeneous active-site H-bond network.

This study reports a photocontrollable system for the spatiotemporal regulation of mononegavirus gene expression and replication.

The flow of energy in Earth's primary light harvesters — photosynthetic pigment–protein complexes — needs to be heavily regulated, as the sun's energy supply can vary over many orders of magnitude. Observing hundreds of individual light-harvesting complexes has now provided important insights into the machinery that regulates this process.

The process of electronic energy transfer between molecules has long fascinated chemists. Femtosecond spectroscopy measurements of a series of molecular dimers now reveal signals that arise from non-Born–Oppenheimer coupling, suggesting a new mechanism to enhance energy transfer.

The activity of the plant photoreceptor cryptochrome 2 is regulated by a newly characterized interacting protein that prevents cryptochrome 2 homodimerization.

Vision is initiated by photoisomerization of 11-cis retinal in the visual pigment rhodopsin — a fast and efficient process. Spectroscopic studies now demonstrate that the transition from the reactant photoexcited-state to the ground-state photoproduct, which mediates this important reaction, occurs on a sub-50-fs timescale and is vibrationally coherent.