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

Abstract

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%.