This project, in the Inorganic, Bioinorganic and Organometallic Chemistry Program, focusses on the use of lanthanide ion luminescence to investigate diffusion-enhanced energy transfer between lanthanide energy donors and inorganic acceptors. The objective is to develop an understanding of resonant exchange energy transfer previously shown to dominate these systems and of chiral discrimination in the energy transfer between chiral lanthanide and chiral inorganic ions. Also to be examined are lanthanide complexes as intercalation agents for probes of double-helical DNA and as targeted MRI agents, further studies of the photophysics of sensitized luminescence for immunoassay analytical applications, and characterization of siderophore and model siderophore complexes of lanthanide ions. Molecular mechanics/dynamics calculations will be used to direct the design of certain reagents, particularly in chiral recognition and DNA intercalation. %%% This project is concerned with the use of the special luminescence characteristics of lanthanide ions that result from laser irradiation to examine a variety of chemical events and to develop improved methods that may have potential for the study of metal ion-protein and metal ion-DNA interactions, and ultimately for clinical analyses.
