Month: September 2022

PLANT POWER. "Photosynthetic complexes are exquisitely tuned to capture solar light efficiently, and then transmit the excitation energy to reaction centres, where long term energy storage is initiated." https://lnkd.in/e7zeiN5 View in LinkedIn

QUANTUM COHERENCE under physiological conditions. "The numerical results reveal that electronic coherence persists for several hundred femtoseconds even at physiological temperature." https://lnkd.in/eX8Awwc View in LinkedIn

HEAT VENT. "Plants regulate light harvesting by photosystem II (PSII) in response to changes in light intensity. One way that plants are able to regulate light harvesting is through turning on and off mechanisms that dissipate excess energy." https://lnkd.in/exqrrHt View in LinkedIn

ULTRA-FAST AND SUPER-EFFICIENT. "One of the simplest and most well-studied examples is the light-harvesting apparatus of green-sulphur bacteria. What is remarkable is the observed efficiency of this and other photosynthetic units. Almost every photon (nearly 100%) that is absorbed is successfully transferred to the reaction centre, even though the intermediate electronic excitations are very short-lived (~ 1 ns)." https://lnkd.in/eRUdQZj View in LinkedIn

QUANTUM ENERGY TRANSFER. "In 2007, Fleming and co-workers demonstrated evidence for quantum coherent energy transfer in the FMO complex, and since then the FMO protein has been one of the main subjects of research in quantum biology." https://lnkd.in/eRUdQZj View in LinkedIn

QUANTUM TUNNELING. "The least disputable case, though arguably the most mundane, is enzyme catalysis, where quantum tunnelling enables proton and electron transfer. It also appears beyond doubt that photosynthesis involves transfer of energy from the excited chromophore to the reaction centre in an excitonic wavefunction that maintains a state of quantum coherence." https://lnkd.in/eJrZRx4 View in LinkedIn

ADAPTION OR COINCIDENCE? "It's not yet clear if quantum coherence is adaptive. It does seem to help the efficiency of energy transfer, but that might be a happy accident – Graham Fleming, one of the pioneers in this area, says it may be simply ‘a byproduct of the dense packing of chromophores required to optimise solar absorption.' " https://lnkd.in/eJrZRx4 View in LinkedIn

CHLOROPHYLL QUANTUM COMPUTING. "Photosynthesis achieves a whopping 95 percent energy transfer efficiency rate, “more efficient than any other energy transfer process known to man,” says McFadden. Within chlorophyll, so-called antenna pigments guide energy from light-collecting molecules to nearby reaction-center proteins along a choice of possible pathways." http://discovermagazine.com/2014/dec/17-this-quantum-life View in LinkedIn

"QUANTUM coherence...has no classical analogue." https://lnkd.in/e7zeiN5 View in LinkedIn

PHOTOSYNTHESIS. "The energy collected by these chlorosomes is transferred to the reaction centre through a specialized structure called the Fenna–Matthews–Olson (FMO) complex. In 2007, Fleming and co-workers demonstrated evidence for quantum coherent energy transfer in the FMO complex, and since then the FMO protein has been one of the main subjects of research in quantum biology." https://lnkd.in/eRUdQZj View in LinkedIn