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The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has added new urgency to the study of viral mechanisms of infection. But while vaccines offer a measure of protection against this specific outbreak, a new era of pandemics has been predicted. In addition to this, COVID-19 has drawn attention to post-viral syndromes and the healthcare burden they entail. It seems integral that knowledge of viral mechanisms is increased through as wide a research field as possible. To this end we propose that quantum biology might offer essential new insights into the problem, especially with regards to the important first step of virus-host invasion. Research in quantum biology often centres around energy or charge transfer. While this is predominantly in the context of photosynthesis there has also been some suggestion that cellular receptors such as olfactory or neural receptors might employ vibration assisted electron tunnelling to augment the lock-and-key mechanism. Quantum tunnelling has also been observed in enzyme function. Enzymes are implicated in the invasion of host cells by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Receptors such as olfactory receptors also appear to be disrupted by COVID-19. Building on these observations we investigate the evidence that quantum tunnelling might be important in the context of infection with SARS-CoV-2. We illustrate this with a simple model relating the vibronic mode of, for example, a viral spike protein to the likelihood of charge transfer in an idealised receptor. Our results show a distinct parameter regime in which the vibronic mode of the spike protein enhances electron transfer. With this in mind, novel therapeutics to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission could potentially be identified by their vibrational spectra., Comment: 32 pages, 7 figures

We reveal stacking-induced strong coupling between atomic motion and interlayer excitons through photocurrent measurements of WSe$_2$/MoSe$_2$ heterojunction photodiodes. Strong coupling manifests as pronounced periodic sidebands in the photocurrent spectrum in frequency windows close to the interlayer exciton resonances. The sidebands, which repeat over large swathes of the interlayer exciton photocurrent spectrum, occur in energy increments corresponding directly to a prominent vibrational mode of the heterojunction. Such periodic patterns, together with interlayer photoconductance oscillations, vividly demonstrate the emergence of extraordinarily strong exciton-phonon coupling - and its impact on interlayer excitations - in stack-engineered van der Waals heterostructure devices. Our results establish photocurrent spectroscopy as a powerful tool for interrogating vibrational coupling to interlayer excitons and suggest an emerging strategy to control vibronic physics in the solid-state.

Photosynthesis is remarkable, achieving near unity light harvesting quantum efficiency in spite of dynamic light conditions and noisy physiological environment. Under these adverse conditions, it remains unknown whether there exists a fundamental organizing principle that gives rise to robust photosynthetic light harvesting. Here, we present a noise-canceling network model that relates noisy physiological conditions, power conversion efficiency, and the resulting absorption spectrum of photosynthetic organisms. Taking external light conditions in three distinct niches - full solar exposure, light filtered by oxygenic phototrophs, and under sea water - we derive optimal absorption characteristics for efficient solar power conversion. We show how light harvesting antennae can be finely tuned to maximize power conversion efficiency by minimizing excitation noise, thus providing a unified theoretical basis for the experimentally observed wavelength dependence of light absorption in green plants, purple bacteria, and green sulfur bacteria.

Plasmonic coupling of metallic nanoparticles and adjacent pigments can dramatically increase the brightness of the pigments due to the enhanced local electric field. Here, we demonstrate that the fluorescence brightness of a single plant light-harvesting complex (LHCII) can be significantly enhanced when coupled to single gold nanorods (AuNRs). The AuNRs utilized in this study were prepared via chemical reactions, and the hybrid system was constructed using a simple and economical spin-assisted layer-by-layer technique. Enhancement of fluorescence brightness of up to 240-fold was observed, accompanied by a 109-fold decrease in the average (amplitude-weighted) fluorescence lifetime from approximately 3.5 ns down to 32 ps, corresponding to an excitation enhancement of 63-fold and emission enhancement of up to 3.8-fold. This large enhancement is due to the strong spectral overlap of the longitudinal localized surface plasmon resonance of the utilized AuNRs and the absorption or emission bands of LHCII. This study provides an inexpensive strategy to explore the fluorescence dynamics of weakly emitting photosynthetic light-harvesting complexes at the single molecule level., Comment: 23 pages, 6 figures, 2 supplementary figures, and supplementary equations

Following the observation of coherent oscillations in non-linear spectra of photosynthetic pigment protein complexes, particularly phycobilliprotein such as PC645, coherent vibronic transport has been suggested as a design principle for novel light harvesting materials operating at room temperature. Vibronic transport between energetically remote pigments is coherent when the presence of a resonant vibration supports transient delocalization between the pair of electronic excited states. Here, we establish the mechanism of vibronic transport for a model heterodimer across a wide range of molecular parameter values. The resulting mechanistic map demonstrates that the molecular parameters of phycobiliproteins in fact support incoherent vibronic transport. This result points to an important design principle: incoherent vibronic transport is more efficient than a coherent mechanism when energetic disorder exceeds the coupling between the donor and vibrationally excited acceptor states. Finally, our results suggest that the role of coherent vibronic transport in pigment protein complexes should be reevaluated.

Experimental/theoretical evidence for sustained vibration-assisted electronic (vibronic) coherence in the Photosystem II Reaction Center (PSII RC) indicates that photosynthetic solar-energy conversion might be optimized through the interplay of electronic and vibrational quantum dynamics. This evidence has been obtained by investigating the primary charge separation process in the PSII RC by two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy (2DES) and Redfield modeling of the experimental data. However, while conventional Fourier transform analysis of the 2DES data allows oscillatory signatures of vibronic coherence to be identified in the frequency domain in the form of static 2D frequency maps, the real-time evolution of the coherences is lost. Here we apply for the first time wavelet analysis to the PSII RC 2DES data to obtain time-resolved 2D frequency maps. These maps allow us to demonstrate that i) coherence between the excitons initiating the two different charge separation pathways is active for more than 500 fs, and ii) coherence between exciton and charge-transfer states, the reactant and product of the charge separation reaction, respectively, is active for at least 1 ps. These findings imply that the PSII RC employs coherence i) to sample competing electron transfer pathways, and ii) to perform directed, ultrafast and efficient electron transfer., Comment: Scientific reports 2017

Since the emergence of oxygenic photosynthesis, living systems have developed protective mechanisms against reactive oxygen species. During charge separation in photosynthetic reaction centres, triplet states can react with molecular oxygen generating destructive singlet oxygen. The triplet product yield in bacteria is observed to be reduced by weak magnetic fields. Reaction centres from plants' photosystem II share many features with bacterial reaction centres, including a high-spin iron whose function has remained obscure. To explain observations that the magnetic field effect is reduced by the iron, we propose that its fast-relaxing spin plays a protective role in photosynthesis by generating an effective magnetic field. We consider a simple model of the system, derive an analytical expression for the effective magnetic field and analyse the resulting triplet yield reduction. The protective mechanism is robust for realistic parameter ranges, constituting a clear example of a quantum effect playing a macroscopic role vital for life., Comment: 25 pages, 6 figure

The photosystem II reaction centre is the photosynthetic complex responsible for oxygen production on Earth. Its water splitting function is particularly favoured by the formation of a stable charge separated state via a pathway that starts at an accessory chlorophyll. Here we envision a photovoltaic device that places one of these complexes between electrodes and investigate how the mean current and its fluctuations depend on the microscopic interactions underlying charge separation in the pathway considered. Our results indicate that coupling to well resolved vibrational modes does not necessarily offer an advantage in terms of power output but can lead to photo-currents with suppressed noise levels characterizing a multi-step ordered transport process. Besides giving insight into the suitability of these complexes for molecular-scale photovoltaics, our work suggests a new possible biological function for the vibrational environment of photosynthetic reaction centres, namely, to reduce the intrinsic current noise for regulatory processes., Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures

Biology offers a boundless source of adaptation, innovation, and inspiration. A wide range of photosynthetic organisms exist that are capable of harvesting solar light in an exceptionally efficient way, using abundant and low-cost materials. These natural light-harvesting complexes consist of proteins that strongly bind a high density of chromophores to capture solar photons and rapidly transfer the excitation energy to the photochemical reaction centre. The amount of harvested light is also delicately tuned to the level of solar radiation to maintain a constant energy throughput at the reaction centre and avoid the accumulation of the products of charge separation. In this Review, recent developments in the understanding of light harvesting by plants will be discussed, based on results obtained from single molecule spectroscopy studies. Three design principles of the main light-harvesting antenna of plants will be highlighted: (a) fine, photoactive control over the intrinsic protein disorder to efficiently use intrinsically available thermal energy dissipation mechanisms; (b) the design of the protein microenvironment of a low-energy chromophore dimer to control the amount of shade absorption; (c) the design of the exciton manifold to ensure efficient funneling of the harvested light to the terminal emitter cluster.

We derive approximate equations of motion for excited state dynamics of a multilevel open quantum system weakly interacting with light to describe fluorescence detected single molecule spectra. Based on the Frenkel exciton theory, we construct a model for the chlorophyll part of the LHCII complex of higher plants and its interaction with previously proposed excitation quencher in the form of the lutein molecule Lut 1. The resulting description is valid over a broad range of timescales relevant for single molecule spectroscopy, i.e. from ps to minutes. Validity of these equations is demonstrated by comparing simulations of ensemble and single-molecule spectra of monomeric LHCII with experiments. Using a conformational change of the LHCII protein as a switching mechanism, the intensity and spectral time traces of individual LHCII complexes are simulated, and the experimental statistical distributions are reproduced. Based on our model, it is shown that with reasonable assumptions about its interaction with chlorophylls, Lut 1 can act as an efficient fluorescence quencher in LHCII., Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures and 4 pages of Supplementary Information

Energy relaxation in light-harvesting complexes has been extensively studied by various ultrafast spectroscopic techniques, the fastest processes being in the sub-100 fs range. At the same time much slower dynamics have been observed in individual complexes by single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy (SMS). In this work we employ a pump-probe type SMS technique to observe the ultrafast energy relaxation in single light-harvesting complexes LH2 of purple bacteria. After excitation at 800 nm, the measured relaxation time distribution of multiple complexes has a peak at 95 fs and is asymmetric, with a tail at slower relaxation times. When tuning the excitation wavelength, the distribution changes in both its shape and position. The observed behaviour agrees with what is to be expected from the LH2 excited states structure. As we show by a Redfield theory calculation of the relaxation times, the distribution shape corresponds to the expected effect of Gaussian disorder of the pigment transition energies. By repeatedly measuring few individual complexes for minutes, we find that complexes sample the relaxation time distribution on a timescale of seconds. Furthermore, by comparing the distribution from three long-lived complexes with the whole ensemble, we demonstrate that the ensemble can be considered ergodic. Our findings thus agree with the commonly used notion of an ensemble of identical LH2 complexes experiencing slow random fluctuations., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures and 3 pages of supplementary information