Singlet oxygen lipid photooxidation

Ultraviolet light damages proteins as well as DNA. Residues of Trp, Tyr, His, Cys, and Met are especially susceptible to photolysis, or photooxidation by 02, or by singlet oxygen. Also damaged are unsaturated lipids, porphyrins, flavins, etc. Kynurenic acid (Fig. 25-11) and urocanic acid (Eq. 14-44), an important ultraviolet filter in skin,196 are also decomposed by light. 

This process continually generates lipid free radicals. The formation of nonradical products resulting from the combination of two radical species can terminate this chain reaction or propagation. Alternatively, unsaturated lipids can form hydroperoxides by reacting with singlet oxygen produced by sensitized photooxidation, which is a non-free-radical process. 

Lipid oxidation in foods is a complex chain of reactions that first consist of the introduction of a functional group containing two concatenated oxygen atoms (peroxides) into unsaturated fatty acids, in a free-radical chain reaction, that afterward gives rise to secondary oxidation products. Different pathways for lipid oxidation have been described radical mechanism or autoxidation, singlet oxygen-mediated mechanism or photooxidation, and enzymatic oxidation. 

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