Xanthophyll pigments in light-harvesting complex II in monomolecular layers: localisation, energy transfer and orientation

Energy transfer between carotenoids and bacteriochlorophylls in light-harvesting complex II of purple bacteria

In photosynthetic light-harvesting systems carotenoids and chlorophylls jointly absorb light and transform its energy within about a picosecond into electronic singlet excitations of the chlorophylls only. This paper investigates this process for the light-harvesting complex II of the purple bacterium Rhodospirillum molischianum, for which a structure and, hence, the exact arrangement of the pa...

Optimal Energy Transfer in Light-Harvesting Systems.

Photosynthesis is one of the most essential biological processes in which specialized pigment-protein complexes absorb solar photons, and with a remarkably high efficiency, guide the photo-induced excitation energy toward the reaction center to subsequently trigger its conversion to chemical energy. In this work, we review the principles of optimal energy transfer in various natural and artific...

Energy Transfer and Photosynthetic Light Harvesting

Singlet energy dissipation in the photosystem II light-harvesting complex does not involve energy transfer to carotenoids.

The energy dissipation mechanism in oligomers of the major light-harvesting complex II (LHC II) from Arabidopsis thaliana mutants npq1 and npq2, zeaxanthin-deficient and zeaxanthin-enriched, respectively, has been studied by femtosecond transient absorption. The kinetics obtained at different excitation intensities are compared and the implications of singlet-singlet annihilation are discussed....

Energy transfer dynamics in trimers and aggregates of light-harvesting complex II probed by 2D electronic spectroscopy.

The pathways and dynamics of excitation energy transfer between the chlorophyll (Chl) domains in solubilized trimeric and aggregated light-harvesting complex II (LHCII) are examined using two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy (2DES). The LHCII trimers and aggregates exhibit the unquenched and quenched excitonic states of Chl a, respectively. 2DES allows direct correlation of excitation and em...