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LETTUCE QUANTUM COMPUTERS. "In the 2007 experiment, University of California, Berkeley, chemist Graham Fleming and colleagues ran experiments on green sulfur bacteria that appeared to suggest this quantum approach. These were jaw-dropping experiments...Physicists had been battling for years to build a quantum computer — and now it seemed that all that time they may have been eating quantum computers for lunch, in the leaves in their salad!” http://discovermagazine.com/2014/dec/17-this-quantum-life View in LinkedIn

COHERENCE AND ENTANGLEMENT. "Recent studies have identified quantum coherence and entanglement between the excited states of different pigments in the light-harvesting stage of photosynthesis. Although this stage of photosynthesis is highly efficient, it remains unclear exactly how or if these quantum effects are relevant biologically." https://lnkd.in/epQ9hra View in LinkedIn

LESS IS MORE. "Recent analysis has shown that the efficiency benefits provided by quantum models in comparison to the classical Förster model (which can be seen as a perturbative expansion of the quantum one, with no quantum coherence) may be only a few per cent. However, even a few per cent improvement in efficiency may be vital for a plant or bacteria attempting to survive in low-light conditions." https://lnkd.in/eRUdQZj View in LinkedIn

QB TIME-SCALES. "There are two other important timescales to be considered. One is the rate at which the excitation leaves the target molecule and enters the reaction centre (~ 1 ps). The other is the rate at which the excitation in any of the BChl is lost owing to fluorescence relaxation (~ 1 ns). It is this latter rate that the excitation must beat, in its race to reach the reaction centre. Remarkably, the excitation is almost always transferred to the reaction centre faster than it can be lost to fluorescence relaxation." https://lnkd.in/eRUdQZj View in LinkedIn

QUANTUM VS CLASSICAL. "When coupled to an energy trap such as the reaction center, this process can greatly increase the quantum yield of a system relative to the classical limit" during photosynthesis. https://lnkd.in/eytWxV5 View in LinkedIn

PHOTOSYNTHESIS EFFICIENCY is increased by superposition. "Superposition contributes to more efficient energy transport. An exciton, a quantum quasi-particle carrying energy, can travel faster along the photosynthetic complex due to the fact that it can exist in two states simultaneously. When it comes to a bifurcation it need not choose left or right. It can proceed down both paths simultaneously." https://lnkd.in/e3xDSJC View in LinkedIn

WIRED PROTEINS. "These observations provide compelling evidence for quantum-coherent sharing of electronic excitation across the 5-nm-wide proteins under biologically relevant conditions, suggesting that distant molecules within the photosynthetic proteins are ‘wired’ together by quantum coherence for more efficient light-harvesting in cryptophyte marine algae." https://lnkd.in/edvYfjM View in LinkedIn

COMBINED EFFECT. "A radical pair is (typically) a pair of bound molecules that each has an unpaired electron. These pairs are created, by a photochemical process, in spin-correlated states; that is, singlets or triplets. The state of these spins then evolves under the combined effect of the Earth’s weak magnetic field and internal nuclear hyperfine interactions with the host nuclei. Finally, the rate of charge recombination depends on the spin of the separated charges, directly influencing the reaction products of these radical pairs." https://lnkd.in/eRUdQZj View in LinkedIn

ENERGY CASCADE. "The arrangement of the chromophores in FMO results in a downhill, rugged energetic landscape with two distinct routes through which an excitation can travel to reach the lowest energy state. While classical trajectories can navigate such funnel-like landscapes, the wave-like motion through the complex improves efficiency by avoiding kinetic traps." (FMO = antenna complex). https://lnkd.in/eytWxV5 View in LinkedIn

RADICAL PAIRS. "Schulten et al., proposed the radical-pair mechanism as a plausible biological chemical-compass. It was already well known that radical pairs can mediate magnetic-field-sensitive and light-activated chemical reactions, but up to that point only with external fields much stronger than the Earth’s." https://lnkd.in/eRUdQZj View in LinkedIn