Saturday, October 24, 2009

What is unique about photosynthetic chromophores?

How are the chromophores in photosynthetic proteins different from in other biomolecules? Why does one see quantum coherence in these systems?

They are much more weakly coupled to their environment than other chromophores. Graham Fleming pointed out that their Stokes shift [which is a measure of the reorganisation energy] is orders of magnitude smaller than other chromophores.
Is this because they are membrane proteins and so are more isolated from the decohering effects of the bulk water outside the membrane?

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