Related papers: Electronic Energy Migration in Microtubules
It was once purported that biological systems were far too warm and wet to support quantum phenomena mainly due to thermal effects disrupting quantum coherence. However recent experimental results and theoretical analyses have shown that…
In the work the process of the energy transfer in the cell microtubules is simulated. A system of tryptophans connected by Coulomb dipole-dipole interaction is discussed as the energy carriers. The work models the conditions under which the…
Microtubules are biological protein polymers with critical and diverse functions. Their structures share some similarities with photosynthetic antenna complexes, particularly in the ordered arrangement of photoactive molecules with large…
Microtubules are hollow cylindrical polymers composed of the highly negatively-charged (~23e), high dipole moment (1750 D) protein a,b-tubulin. While the roles of microtubules in chromosomal segregation, macromolecular transport and cell…
Microtubules host dense ultraviolet-absorbing aromatic networks, suggesting an opportunity to engineer their optical response for biotechnology. Here we assess the feasibility of tuning microtubule fluorescence by combining an excitonic…
Networks of aromatic amino acid residues within microtubules, particularly those formed by tryptophan, may serve as pathways for optical information flow. Ultraviolet excitation dynamics in these networks are typically modeled with…
A model is presented for dissipationless energy transfer in cell microtubules due to quantum coherent states. The model is based on conjectured (hydrated) ferroelectric properties of microtubular arrangements. Ferroelectricity is essential…
Motor-driven cytoskeletal remodeling in cellular systems can often be accompanied by a diffusive-like effect at local scales, but distinguishing the contributions of the ordering process, such as active contraction of a network, from this…
Electronic Energy Transfer (EET) between chromophores is fundamental in many natural light-harvesting complexes, serving as a critical step for solar energy funneling in photosynthetic plants and bacteria. The complicated role of the…
Microtubules are filament-shaped, polymeric proteins (~25 nm in diameter) involved in cellular structure and organization. We demonstrate the imaging of individual microtubules using a conventional bright-field microscope, without any…
Phototrophic organisms such as plants, photosynthetic bacteria and algae use microscopic complexes of pigment molecules to absorb sunlight. Within the light-harvesting complexes, which frequently have several functional and structural…
Unravelling the nature of energy transport in multi-chromophoric photosynthetic complexes is essential to extract valuable design blueprints for light-harvesting applications. Long-range exciton transport in such systems is facilitated by a…
Microtubules (MTs) are important cytoskeletal structures, engaged in a number of specific cellular activities, including vesicular traffic, cell cyto-architecture and motility, cell division, and information processing within neuronal…
Natural light-harvesting antenna complexes efficiently capture solar energy using chlorophyll, i.e., magnesium porphyrin pigments, embedded in a protein matrix. Inspired by this natural configuration, artificial clay-porphyrin antenna…
Many cellular processes are tightly connected to the dynamics of microtubules (MTs). While in neuronal axons MTs mainly regulate intracellular trafficking, they participate in cytoskeleton reorganization in many other eukaryotic cells,…
Microtubules, the primary components of the chromosome segregation machinery, are stabilized by longitudinal and lateral non-covalent bonds between the tubulin subunits. However, the thermodynamics of these bonds and the microtubule…
Intracellular components explore the cytoplasm via active motor-driven transport in conjunction with passive diffusion. We model the motion of organelles in narrow tubular cells using analytical techniques and numerical simulations to study…
Photosynthetic organisms use networks of chromophores to absorb sunlight and deliver the energy to reaction centres, where charge separation triggers a cascade of chemical steps to store the energy. We present a detailed model of the…
Photoluminescence is commonly used to identify the electronic structure of individual nanotubes. But, nanotubes naturally occur in bundles. Thus, we investigate photoluminescence of nanotube bundles. We show that their complex spectra are…
Understanding how the effectiveness of natural photosynthetic energy harvesting systems arises from the interplay between quantum coherence and environmental noise represents a significant challenge for quantum theory. Recently it has begun…