The scope of this review is the nature and dynamics of the singlet excited electronic states
created in nucleic acids and their constituents by UV light. Interest in the UV photochemistry …

Fluorescence spectroscopy, one of the most informative and sensitive analytical techniques,
has played and continues to play key roles in modern research. Indeed, unraveling the inner …

The combined results of ab initio electronic-structure calculations and spectroscopic
investigations of jet-cooled molecules and clusters provide strong evidence of a surprisingly …

Almost all biological macromoleculessproteins (enzymes) and DNAsare inactive in the
absence of water. Hydration of a protein/enzyme is particularly important for the stability of …

Biological water at the interface of proteins is critical to their equilibrium structures and
enzyme function and to phenomena such as molecular recognition and protein–protein …

DNA owes its remarkable photostability to its building blocks—the nucleosides—that
efficiently dissipate the energy acquired upon ultraviolet light absorption. The mechanism …

Fluorescent nucleoside analogues (FNAs) are structurally diverse mimics of the natural
essentially non-fluorescent nucleosides which have found numerous applications in probing …

Conspectus The intrinsic fluorescence of nucleic acids is extremely weak compared to that
of the fluorescent labels used to probe their structural and functional behavior. Thus, for …

Radiationless deactivation pathways of excited gas phase nucleobases were investigated
using mass-selected femtosecond resolved pump-probe resonant ionization. By comparison …

The lifetimes of the excited state of free nucleobases were measured in the gas phase for
the first time. They are, respectively, 1.0 and 0.8 ps for the purine bases adenine (shown …