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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

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

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

"PHOTOSYNTHETIC ANTENNA complexes capture and concentrate solar radiation by transferring the excitation to the reaction center that stores energy from the photon in chemical bonds. This process occurs with near-perfect quantum efficiency." https://lnkd.in/eytWxV5 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

ANTENNA PROTEINS. "Photosynthesis makes use of sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into useful biomass and is vital for life on Earth. Crucial components for the photosynthetic process are antenna proteins, which absorb light and transmit the resultant excitation energy between molecules to a reaction centre." https://lnkd.in/edvYfjM 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

QUANTUM COHERENCE. "Direct evidence for the presence of quantum coherence over appreciable length scales and timescales in the FMO complex was observed by Engel et al. Since that time a huge body of literature has arisen, and further experiments suggest that the coherence is non-negligible even at room temperature, for up to 300 fs." https://lnkd.in/eRUdQZj 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

"THE QUANTUM COHERENCE manifests itself in characteristic, directly observable quantum beating signals among the excitons within the Chlorobium tepidum FMO complex at 77 K. This wavelike characteristic of the energy transfer within the photosynthetic complex can explain its extreme efficiency, in that it allows the complexes to sample vast areas of phase space to find the most efficient path." https://lnkd.in/e7zeiN5 View in LinkedIn