Photochemical biosignaling with ruthenium complexes

FILEVICH, OSCAR; ETCHENIQUE, ROBERTO

ADVANCES IN INORGANIC CHEMISTRY

ELSEVIER ACADEMIC PRESS INC

Año: 2022 vol. 80 p. 321 - 354

0898-8838

Ruthenium coordination complexes bearing polypyridines have been studied for many years. While pursuing energy harvesting devices, considerable understanding about their photophysics and photochemistry was gained. This knowledge has recently been applied to a somewhat different application, namely the creation of a versatile scaffold which can release a molecule upon light absorption. The structural diversity, photochemical tunability, and clean photochemistry of this scaffold are of great advantage when designing new applications and as tools in biological research. In this chapter we describe the first incursions in the field of Ru-based phototriggers and the rationale backing their design. We highlight some of the recent applications in biology research, and note how the coupling with other emerging technologies aids in the sudden diversification of functions explored with Ru coordination complexes.