Eur. Phys. J. A 13, 189-195 (2002)
New life science studies with muons and radioactive nuclei
K. NagamineMuon Science Laboratory, Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN), 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako-shi, Saitama 351-0198, Japan Meson Science Laboratory, Institute of Materials Structure Science (KEK), 1-1 Oho, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0801, Japan
(Received: 1 May 2001 / Revised version: 28 June 2001 )
Abstract
Electron-transfer phenomena in biological macromolecules
are among the most important processes in physics. Since there are no
"radioactive electrons", a limited number of microscopic studies exist,
and thus most knowledge is based upon macroscopic studies. In order to
overcome this situation, a muon-labelled electrons method
was recently
developed and successfully applied to directly exploring microscopic
electron-transfer phenomena in representative proteins, such as
cytochrome-c, cytochrome-c oxidase and myoglobin as well as DNA. The
principle and some details of each experiment are reviewed. A possible
extension to the labelled-electron method with radioactive nuclei is
discussed.
76.75.+i - Muon spin rotation and relaxation.
87.15.-v - Biomolecules: structure and physical properties.
87.66.Uv - Magnetic resonance.
© Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 2002
