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China Unveils Plan for Basic Science Research.

China Brain Project to Launch Soon, Aiming to Develop Effective Tools for Early Diagnosis of Brain Diseases.

China Pins Hopes on Scientific Innovation.

Sanofi Strategic Health Project Aimed at Improving Community Chronic Disease Management Capabilities.

RegeneRx and Lee's Pharm Announce Acceleration of RGN-259 Development in China.

Institute of Biophysics Research Clarifies Light-harvesting Process in Plants.

High-Tech Program on Microbiome-Based Research Launched in Qingdao.

HONG KONG NEWS – Lenovo Launches its Accelerator Incubator for Early Stage Start-Ups.

Efficient Light-Harvesting of Plants: Conversation with Professor Alexander Ruban.

Takeda Pharmaceuticals in the Emerging Markets.

Burden of Thrombosis-related Diseases in Asia-Pacific.

GE Healthcare's Cell Culture Media Facility in Singapore.

Waste Management in Singapore: Where Does Our Rubbish Go?

The spectral coverage of porphyrin-based light-harvesting arrays can be enhanced through the use of suitable accessory pigments. Perylene-monoimide dyes can serve as valuable accessory pigments with porphyrins. To investigate the choice of perylene-monoimide and the effects of molecular architecture on light-harvesting efficacy, five perylene-porphyrin dyads were prepared. Each dyad employs a diphenylethyne linker that bridges the perylene N-imide site and the porphyrin meso-position. Three dyads incorporate a mono-phenoxy perylene at the o-, m-, or p-position of the meso-aryl group on the porphyrin. The two remaining dyads incorporate a perylene-monoimide (bearing zero or three phenoxy substituents) at the p-position of the meso-aryl group on the porphyrin. The introduction of phenoxy groups on the perylenes increases the solubility, a key requirement for use in light-harvesting arrays. The long-wavelength absorption band of the perylene shifts from 506 nm to 532 or 533 nm upon substitution with one or three phenoxy groups, respectively. The synthesis of the dyads entails Pd-mediated coupling of a bromo-perylene and an ethynyl porphyrin, or the mixed-aldehyde condensation with a perylene-aldehyde, mesitaldehyde, and pyrrole. Five perylene-monoimide dyes bearing an ethyne or bromo substituent at the p-position of the N-aryl unit were developed for this modular chemistry. Each perylene-porphyrin dyad exhibits efficient energy transfer from the excited perylene to the ground-state porphyrin.

Photosynthetic organisms provide, directly or indirectly, the energy that sustains life on earth by harvesting light from the sun. The amount of light impinging on the surface of the earth vastly surpasses the energy needs of life including man. Harvesting the sun is, therefore, an option for a sustainable energy source: directly by improving biomass production, indirectly by coupling it to the production of hydrogen for fuel or, conceptually, by using photosynthetic strategies for technological solutions based on non-biological or hybrid materials. In this review, we summarize the various light climates on earth, the primary reactions responsible for light harvesting and transduction to chemical energy in photosynthesis, and the mechanisms of competitively adapting the photosynthetic apparatus to the ever-changing light conditions. The focus is on oxygenic photosynthesis, its adaptation to the various light-climates by specialized pigments and on the extension of its limits by the evolution of red-shifted chlorophylls. The implications for potential technical solutions are briefly discussed.

In this mini-review, new developments in chemistry of organometallic porphyrins and their analogs reported between 2007 and mid 2012 have been discussed. Synthetic strategies for preparation, as well as properties of metallocenyl-type compounds in which organometallic substituents connected to the porphyrinoid via (i) axial coordination; (ii) covalent bond to meso- or β-pyrrolic position; or (iii) β,β′-fused into the aromatic system as well as porphyrinoids with organometallic fragments σ-bonded in η¹-fashion were overviewed.

Purple bacteria have circular light-harvesting complexes that absorb incident solar radiation and rapidly and efficiently transfer that excitation energy to reaction centres where it is trapped. This chapter describes our current understanding of the structure and function of these antenna complexes and places particular emphasis on the general design principles that the purple bacteria have adopted to solve the light-harvesting problem.

The structural and spectroscopic properties of self-assembled light-harvesting chromophores are discussed. In photosynthetic organisms, light-harvesting aggregates are optimized for absorption of particular wavelengths of the solar spectrum and for energy transfer to the photosynthetic reaction center. Artifical light-harvesting aggregates composed of porphyrins provide model systems for understanding how the hierarchal structure of these assemblies determines their optical properties. Resonance Raman and scanning probe microscopy of porphyrin aggregates reveal the structural features and intermolecular interactions which control this assembly.