This evidence suggests that upregulation of Twist might be involved in the pathogenesis of areca quid-associated OSF through dysregulation of myofibroblast activity.

A fast-scan method was developed to obtain time-resolved signals with femtosecond resolution over a picosecond range on the fly and in real time. Traditional fast-scan methods collect data at each probe wavelength one by one, which is time consuming and thus not possible for the study of photofragile materials. In this work, we have developed a system that performs fast scans with multiplex detection. Ultrafast time-resolved spectroscopy was demonstrated using the newly developed system. Femtosecond laser pulses have been used for pump-probe studies of ultrafast processes in various materials, and both electronic relaxation and vibrational dynamics have been studied. However, experiments have been limited in sensitivity and reliability because they are affected by the long-term instability of the ultrashort laser pulses and by the fragility of the samples. The instability of the sources hinders precise determination of electronic decay dynamics and introduces systematic errors. The fragility of the samples reduces their amount or concentration, and can lead to contamination of the materials even if they were pure before the measurement. These effects make it difficult to obtain reproducible and reliable experimental data. In the present work, we have developed a fast-scan pump-probe spectroscopic system that can complete a set of measurements in less than 2 min. Quantitative estimates of the signal reproducibility demonstrate that these measurements provide higher reproducibility and reliability than conventional measurements.

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Ultrafast dynamics is generally studied by pump-probe method with laser pulse, which scans optical delay by motorized stage step by step. Using ultrashort laser pulse shorter than typical molecular vibration periods, the pump-probe measurement can study both of electronic dynamics and vibration dynamics simultaneously. The probe wavelength dependence of the ultrafast electronic and vibration dynamics (UEVD) helps us to distinguish the signal contributions from the dynamics of the electronic ground state and that of the electronic excited states, which elucidates primary reaction mechanism after photoexcitation. Meanwhile, the measurement time of UEVD spectroscopy takes too long time to be used in realistic application. In our previous work, we have developed multi-channel lock-in amplifying (MLA) detectors to study UEVD at all probe wavelengths simultaneously, and synchronized it with laser and fast-scan delay stage to scan the data in five seconds. It enabled us to study UEVD spectroscopy even for photo-fragile materials. However, the home-made MLA detectors required for the measurement is expensive and massive in size and weight, thus not suitable for general researchers in the field of ultrafast time-resolved spectroscopy. In the present work, we have developed a table-top synchronized fast-scan femtosecond time-resolved spectroscopy system using single shot scan line CCD. This system measures time-resolved trace at all probe wavelengths simultaneously in five seconds. The CCD-based fast-scan time-resolved spectroscopy system enables us to study ultrafast dynamics of various materials even biomaterials, which have been thought to be hard or even impossible to be studied in previous methods.

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