New developments in magnetic circular dichroism application on biological pigments

New approaches to clarification of coordination and aggregation states of chloropylls and bacteri-ochloropylls

Abstract

Magnetic circular dichroisrn (MCD) has played an important role in elucidatiing the electronic structures of highly symrnetric rnolecules with degenerate ground and/or excited states, such as rnetalloporphyrins. For low symmetric molecules with nondegenerate states, such as chlorophylls and bacteriochlorophylls, MCD has been thought to be difficult to explore the information on their function and structure. In this article, recent application of MCD for these molecules is presented and the method is proven to provide useful inforrnation on their coordination state and aggregation structures.