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Towards structure-property-function relationships for eumelanin.

Paul Meredith1, Ben J Powell2, Jennifer Riesz1

  • 1Soft Condensed Matter Physics Group, University of Queensland Department of Physics, St. Lucia Campus, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia. meredith@physics.uq.edu.au.

Soft Matter
|July 11, 2020
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Eumelanin

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Area of Science:

  • Biophysics
  • Materials Science
  • Biochemistry

Background:

  • Eumelanins are crucial biomacromolecules in humans, involved in photo-protection, immune response, and melanoma.
  • Understanding eumelanin's structure-property-function relationships is key to its biological roles.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To explore the link between eumelanin's secondary structure and its optical properties.
  • To investigate how structural disorder influences eumelanin's functionality.

Main Methods:

  • Combined optical spectroscopy with first-principles quantum chemical calculations.
  • Analyzed the relationship between secondary structure and optical characteristics.

Main Results:

  • Eumelanin exhibits broad UV-visible absorption and efficient non-radiative relaxation, crucial for photo-protection.
  • Hypothesized that extreme chemical and structural disorder at the secondary level contributes to eumelanin's robust functionality.

Conclusions:

  • Eumelanin's functional properties are intrinsically linked to its disordered secondary structure.
  • This inherent disorder may be a conserved feature in other functional biomacromolecules.