Sadia Bari: Soft X-ray spectroscopy of isolated biomolecules

Biomolecules are the building blocks of life and it is important to understand how exactly their physical properties are responsible for their functionality and responses to stressors. A very suitable method is to study isolated biomolecules with cutting-edge mass spectrometry techniques at advanced light sources to unravel their intrinsic properties, i.e. in an environment-free and controlled chemical state. In particular, Near-Edge X-ray Absorption Mass Spectrometry (NEXAMS), which is an action-spectroscopy technique based on fragment-resolved absorption upon resonant photoexcitation of core atomic levels, has been of growing interest in recent years for investigating the spatial and electronic structure of biomolecules.

In this seminar, I will present developments in spectroscopic techniques used at large-scale photon facilities to study isolated biomolecules, and I will show the latest results from NEXAMS studies on peptides, proteins and related molecules. Not only spatial and electronic structures, but also damage processes, site-selective dissociation and orbital-dependent deexcitation pathways will be discussed