Photosynthetic Light-Harvesting: A bottom-up theoretical approach

Description

In photosynthesis, light energy absorbed in light-harvesting pigment-potein complexes is tranferred via an exciton mechanism to the reaction center where it is used to drive electron transfer reactions. The quantum efficiency of the transfer can be close to 100 percent, that is, almost all excitons created reach the reaction center. In order to bridge the gap between the crystal structures of photosynthetic light-harvesting proteins and optical experiments probing their function, two essential problems need to be solved. On one hand, theories of optical spectra and excitation energy transfer have to be developed that take into account the pigment-pigment (excitonic) and the pigment-protein (exciton-vibrational) coupling on an equal footing. On the other hand, the parameters entering these theories need to be calculated from the structual data. I will give a summary of recent approaches to solve the above problems and present applications to different antenna proteins revealing different strategies developed in these systems for efficient light-harvesting.

Period	27 Nov 2012
Event title	unbekannt/unknown
Event type	Other
Location	Czech RepublicShow on map