? This proposal intends to develop a highly sensitive method for determining the absolute configurations of biologically active compounds that contain phthalocyanine and one or two chromophores and make complexes with important metal ions such as copper in cells. When two chromophores that absorb light are close to each other and locked in place with a metal ion, exciton-coupled circular dichroism (ECCD) can be used to assign absolute configurations via graphing the absorbance of left and right circularly polarized light versus the wavelength of light absorbed. Upon irradiation, the oxidation state of the molecules would give strong fluorescence in only one position of the chromophores. The development of several chromophores would mean a choice of what region of the electromagnetic spectrum is used to avoid background interference. These compounds would be useful in detecting the relative reducing or oxidizing environment of cells by fluorescence or circular dichroism microscopy. These molecular ion detectors can be useful in the early detection of diseases that occur when cells have abnormally high concentrations of metal ions such as ALS, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's diseases. ? ? ?
