New life science studies with muons and radioactive nuclei

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.