Ultrafast In vivo Transient Absorption Spectroscopy

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the application of ultrafast in vivo transient absorption spectroscopy across diverse organisms, introducing software tools for data analysis and establishing it as a versatile method for studying energy transfer in living systems.

Contribution

It introduces new software tools for analyzing complex in vivo TA data and broadens the application scope of ultrafast TA spectroscopy to various living organisms.

Findings

Successful application of in vivo ultrafast TA across diverse species

Development of software for global, lifetime, and target analysis

Establishment of in vivo TA as a versatile technique

Abstract

Transient absorption (TA) spectroscopy has proved fundamental to our understanding of energy and charge transfer in biological systems, allowing measurements of photoactive proteins on sub-picosecond timescales. Recently, ultrafast TA spectroscopy has been applied in vivo, providing sub-picosecond measurements of photosynthetic light harvesting and electron transfer processes within living photosynthetic microorganisms. The analysis of the resultant data is hindered by the number of different photoactive pigments and the associated complexity of photoactive reaction schemes within living cells. Here we show how in vivo ultrafast TA spectroscopy can be applied to a diverse array of organisms from the tree of life, both photosynthetic and non-photosynthetic. We have developed a series of software tools for performing global, lifetime and target analysis of in vivo TA datasets. These advances establish in vivo TA spectroscopy as a versatile technique for studying energy and charge transfer in living systems.