Porphyrins

The porphyrins are an important class of naturally occurring macro cyclic compounds that play a very important role in the metabolism of living organisms. They have a universal biological distribution and were involved in the oldest metabolic phenomena on earth. Without porphyrins and their relative compounds, life as we know it would be impossible and therefore the knowledge of these systems and their excited states is essential in understanding a wide variety of biological processes, including oxygen binding, electron transfer, catalysis and the initial photochemical step in photosynthesis.