Dahlberg, P.D., Ting, P.-C., Massey, S.C. orcid.org/0000-0002-1602-3325 et al. (4 more authors) (2017) Mapping the ultrafast flow of harvested solar energy in living photosynthetic cells. Nature Communications, 8. 988.
Abstract
Photosynthesis transfers energy efficiently through a series of antenna complexes to the reaction center where charge separation occurs. Energy transfer in vivo is primarily monitored by measuring fluorescence signals from the small fraction of excitations that fail to result in charge separation. Here, we use two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy to follow the entire energy transfer process in a thriving culture of the purple bacteria, Rhodobacter sphaeroides. By removing contributions from scattered light, we extract the dynamics of energy transfer through the dense network of antenna complexes and into the reaction center. Simulations demonstrate that these dynamics constrain the membrane organization into small pools of core antenna complexes that rapidly trap energy absorbed by surrounding peripheral antenna complexes. The rapid trapping and limited back transfer of these excitations lead to transfer efficiencies of 83% and a small functional light-harvesting unit.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2017. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | Antenna complex; Spectrophotometry |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Biosciences (Sheffield) > Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 01 Nov 2017 12:59 |
Last Modified: | 01 Nov 2017 12:59 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-01124-z |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Nature Publishing Group |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41467-017-01124-z |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:123249 |