Picosecond Studies on Bile Pigments

Abstract

Bile pigments are biological dyes built up essentially of four pyrrol rings. Thus they show a certain chemical relationship to haem and chlorophyll, but the pyrrol rings do not form a closed porphyrine ring like in these molecules. Bile pigments are found in various biological systems (e.g. mammalian liver and bile, bird egg-shells, insect wings and cuticula pigments, red and blue algae, higher plants). They play a key role in a number of important photochemical processes, namely

• 1) photo therapy of hepatitis in new-born babies

• 2) photosynthesis in red and blue algae

• 3) higher plant morphogenesis.