Skin contains many autofluorescent components that can be studied using spectral imaging. We employed a spectral phasor method to analyse two photon excited autofluorescence and second harmonic generation images of in vivo human skin. This method allows segmentation of images based on spectral features. Various structures in the skin could be distinguished, including Stratum Corneum, epidermal cells and dermis. The spectral phasor analysis allowed investigation of their fluorescence composition and identification of signals from NADH, keratin, FAD, melanin, collagen and elastin. Interestingly, two populations of epidermal cells could be distinguished with different melanin content.

The relative role of retinal isomerization and microscopic polarization in the phototransduction process of bacteriorhodopsin is still an open question. It is known that both processes occur on an ultrafast time scale. The retinal trans3cis photoisomerization takes place on the time scale of a few hundred femtoseconds. On the other hand, it has been proposed that the primary lightinduced event is a sudden polarization of the retinal environment, although there is no direct experimental evidence for femtosecond charge displacements, because photovoltaic techniques cannot be used to detect charge movements faster than picoseconds. Making use of the known high second-order susceptibility (2) of retinal in proteins, we have used a nonlinear technique, interferometric detection of coherent infrared emission, to study macroscopically oriented bacteriorhodopsin-containing purple membranes. We report and characterize impulsive macroscopic polarization of these films by optical rectification of an 11-fs visible light pulse in resonance with the optical transition. This finding provides direct evidence for charge separation as a precursor event for subsequent functional processes. A simple two-level model incorporating the resonant second-order optical properties of retinal, which are known to be a requirement for functioning of bacteriorhodopsin, is used to describe the observations. In addition to the electronic response, long-lived infrared emission at specific frequencies was observed, reflecting charge movements associated with vibrational motions. The simultaneous and phase-sensitive observation of both the electronic and vibrational signals opens the way to study the transduction of the initial polarization into structural dynamics.R etinal proteins play an essential role in a broad range of light-driven biological processes, including vision (1), energy transduction (2), and circadian control (3). All these functions involve both the conversion of light energy into charge separation and retinal isomerization, but the interplay of these processes is the subject of intense debate. The retinal protein of which the initial photochemistry is most extensively studied is the photosynthetic protein bacteriorhodopsin (bR). This protein colors the purple membrane of halobacteria and acts as a light-driven proton pump by means of a multistep process termed the photocycle (2). In the traditional model for the initial transduction step in this cycle is directly light-driven trans3cis isomerization of retinal (4-6); this model has been recently extended by including excited-state skeletal stretching (5, 7). However, experiments with modified bR containing nonisomerizable retinal analogs challenged this model by showing that the initial photo-induced events are not associated with retinal isomerization (8-10). In fact, in an early alternative hypothesis (11), the essential process was proposed to be dielectric relaxation of the protein as a response to sudden polarization upon retinal excitation (11-13). Recent molecular dynamic...