Excited electronic states in dark biological process

Abstract

It is well known that excited states may be generated chemically in biological systems as evidencex and by the phenomenon of bioluminescence and it is natural to suspect that they may also be generated and used in dark processes (Szent-Györgyi, 1941; Steele, 1963; Cilento, 1965; White & Wei, 1970; Whiteet al.1971). Förster (1967) has pointed out that electronic excitation and subsequent transfer processes may occur in biological dark systems despite the fact that the energy available from enzymic processes is too low to excite aromatic amino acids and other biochemical structures. Hastings (1968) suggests that in some organisms light emission is just an alternative to the formation of an active species.