Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Microspectrophotometry Of Respiratory Pigments, Karen Yvonne Kavanagh

Doctoral

This research thesis describes the design, construction and optical testing of three fibre-optic microspectrophotometer systems to monitor the reduction of mitochondrial respiratory pigments. The optical and biochemical characteristics of mitochondrial respiration are discussed and the current optical techniques employed in the biochemical analysis of respiratory enzymes are presented. The primary focus of this study is the system parameters surrounding the spectrophotometric determination of mitochondrial respiratory activity. Three separate fibre-optic set-ups are described, which use visible spectrophotometry to measure the reduction of mitochondrial electron carriers from a range of biological sources. Each system is based around the Ocean Optics S1000/S2000 series …