Communications Chemistry (Oct 2022)

Intramolecular charge-transfer enhances energy transfer efficiency in carotenoid-reconstituted light-harvesting 1 complex of purple photosynthetic bacteria

  • Nao Yukihira,
  • Chiasa Uragami,
  • Kota Horiuchi,
  • Daisuke Kosumi,
  • Alastair T. Gardiner,
  • Richard J. Cogdell,
  • Hideki Hashimoto

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s42004-022-00749-6
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 5, no. 1
pp. 1 – 11

Abstract

Read online

Studying the excitation energy transfer from carotenoids to bacteriochlorophyll a in purple photosynthetic bacteria could provide insights on how to optimize photosynthetic light-harvesting. Here, the authors study a carotenoid reconstituted core light-harvesting 1 complex from Rhodospirillum rubrum and find that the involvement of the intramolecular charge-transfer excited state of β-apo-8′-carotenal plays a key role in achieving an excitation energy transfer efficiency of ~77%.