Question: what chemical reactions takes place for flavins to undergo an otherwise impossible reaction

Matthew Camilleri answered on 20 Nov 2014:

We are normally used to performing a certain type of chemical reaction, which is the thermal reaction. A new area (which has been around a 100 years) of chemistry is radical chemistry, but unfortunately nobody has any idea of what is really happening, and many people just gave up on the concept to do tried and tested chemistry.

Radicals are formed from an unpaired electron, and this would make it very reactive, meaning that once these are formed they would want to find something to react with.

When light interacts with flavins one of its electrons is excited, and it becomes unpaired, making the flavin a very reactive molecule. This electron can be passed to another molecule and this can then react to form ‘unstable’ compounds, or compounds which cannot be created through normal thermal reactions.