Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies, Department of Physics, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Faraday Discuss. 2019 Dec 16;221(0):59-76. doi: 10.1039/c9fd00081j.
For over a decade there has been some significant excitement and speculation that quantum effects may be important in the excitation energy transport process in the light harvesting complexes of certain bacteria and algae, in particular via the Fenna-Matthews-Olsen (FMO) complex. Whilst the excitement may have waned somewhat with the realisation that the observed long-lived oscillations in two-dimensional electronic spectra of FMO are probably due to vibronic coherences, it remains a question whether these coherences may play any important role. We review our recent work showing how important the site-to-site variation in coupling between chloroplasts in FMO and their protein scaffold environment is for energy transport in FMO and investigate the role of vibronic modes in this transport. Whilst the effects of vibronic excitations seem modest for FMO, we show that for bilin-based pigment-protein complexes of marine algae, in particular PC645, the site-dependent vibronic excitations seem essential for robust excitation energy transport, which may again open the door for important quantum effects to be important in these photosynthetic complexes.
十多年来，人们一直对量子效应对某些细菌和藻类的光捕获复合物中的激发能量传输过程的重要性感到兴奋和猜测，特别是通过 Fenna-Matthews-Olsen (FMO) 复合物。虽然随着人们意识到 FMO 的二维电子光谱中观察到的长寿命振荡可能归因于振子相干，这种兴奋可能已经有所减弱，但这些相干是否可能发挥重要作用仍然是一个问题。我们回顾了我们最近的工作，展示了 FMO 中叶绿体之间以及它们的蛋白质支架环境之间的耦合的站点间变化对 FMO 中的能量传输有多么重要，并研究了振动态在这种传输中的作用。虽然对于 FMO 来说，振动态的影响似乎微不足道，但我们表明，对于海洋藻类的基于双氢卟啉的色素-蛋白质复合物，特别是 PC645，与站点相关的振动态激发对于稳健的激发能量传输似乎是必不可少的，这可能再次为这些光合作用复合物中的重要量子效应打开大门。
