Photobiology: The Science of Light and Life

About this book

The new edition of this authoritative text provides an interdisciplinary treatise of all aspects of the interactions between light and the living world. It starts with a description of the physics of light, and how to deal with it in experiments and observations. The phenomena described in the rest of Photobiology covers all organisms: how light is used by organisms for obtaining energy for life processes, for gathering information about the environment, and for communicating with others of the same or other species. Photobiology also describes "bad" effects of light in causing disease or contributing to formation of environmental toxins. New techniques used by scientists to investigate life processes using light are also explored in Photobiology.
 

Contents

1. The Nature of Light and Its Interaction with Matter
Lars Olof Björn

2. Principles and Nomenclature for the Quantification of Light
Lars Olof Björn

3. Generation and Control of Light
Lars Olof Björn

4. The Measurement of Light
Lars Olof Björn

5. Light as a Tool for Biologists: Recent Developments
Lars Olof Björn

6. Terrestrial Daylight
Lars Olof Björn

7. Underwater Light
Curtis D. Mobley

8. Action Spectroscopy in Biology
Lars Olof Björn

9. Spectral Tuning in Biology  I: Pigments
Lars Olof Björn and Helen Ghiradella

10. Spectral Tuning in Biology  II: Structural Color
Helen Ghiradella, Lars Olof Björn and Shuichi Kinoshita

11. Photoactive Proteins
Lars Olof Björn

12. Molecules and Photochemical Reactions in Biological Light Perception and Regulation
Lars Olof Björn

13. Photoreceptive Proteins and Their Evolution
Lars Olof Björn
 
14. Signaling Crosstalk under the Control of Plant Photoreceptors
Lei Jiang and Shaoshan Li

15. The Diversity of Eye Optics
Lars Olof Björn

16. The Evolution of Photosynthesis and Its Environmental Impact
Lars Olof Björn and Govindjee

17. Photosynthetic Light Harvesting
Tihana Mirkovic and Gregory D. Scholes

18. How Light Resets Circadian Clocks
Anders Johnsson, Charlotte Helfrich-Förster and Wolfgang Engelmann

19. Photomorphogenesis and Photoperiodism in Plants
James L. Weller

20. The Light-Dependent Magnetic Compass
Rachel Muheim and Miriam Liedvogel

21. Phototoxicity
Lars Olof Björn and Pirjo Huovinen

22. Ozone Depletion and the Effects of  Ultraviolet Radiation
Lars Olof Björn and Richard L. McKenzie

23. Vitamin D: Photobiological and Ecological Aspects
Lars Olof Björn

24. The Photobiology of Human Skin
Mary Norval

25. Light-Promoted Infection
Lars Olof Björn

26. Bioluminescence
Lars Olof Björn and Helen Ghiradella

27. Role of Ultraviolet Radiation in the Origin of Life
Lars Olof Björn, Shaoshan Li, Qiu Qiu and Yutao Wang

28. Hints for Teaching Experiments and Demonstrations
Lars Olof Björn

29. The Amateur Scientist’s Spectrophotometer
Lars Olof Björn

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Biography

Lars Olof Björn is professor emeritus at Lund University and has earned several prizes for popularizing science, as well as a Linnaeus prize for botany and a Rimington prize for photobiology. He is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and was on the board of the International Photobiology Association for twelve years.