Congratulations to our PhD student Elena Betti for her publication entitled "Energy Transfer Pathways in Plant Photosystem I from First-Principles Modeling" in the Journal JACS Au. Photosystem I–light harvesting complex I (PSI–LHCI) captures and funnels solar energy toward its reaction center with remarkable efficiency. This occurs despite the presence of low-lying energy states located far from the reaction center—the so-called red forms—which would be expected to act as traps, hindering energy concentration at the reaction center.
What role do these red forms actually play? How does PSI exploit them without compromising efficiency? This work presents a novel quantum chemical model of the full PSI–LHCI pigment network which aims at answering these questions. The model is used to characterize the excitonic structure and inter-pigment transfer rates, identify the dominant energy pathways, and quantify how red forms contribute to the overall transfer dynamics.
To know more, check out the work at https://doi.org/10.1021/jacsau.6c00568
