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Nature 431, 256-257 (16 September 2004) | doi:10.1038/431256a; Published online 15 September 2004

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Physical chemistry:  Quantum mechanics for plants

Graham R. Fleming1 & Gregory D. Scholes2

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To what extent do photosynthetic organisms use quantum mechanics to optimize the capture and distribution of light? Answers are emerging from the examination of energy transfer at the submolecular scale.

The first law of photosynthetic economics is: "A photon saved is a photon earned." Research into the factors behind this principle has been burgeoning, and has recently culminated in a paper in Physical Review Letters by Jang et al.1 in which the authors look at photosynthetic energy transfer at the quantum level.

  1. Graham R. Fleming is in the Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, and at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
    e-mail: Email: grfleming@lbl.gov
  2. Gregory D. Scholes is in the Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto, Lash Miller Chemical Laboratories, 80 St George Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3H6, Canada.
    e-mail: Email: gscholes@chem.utoronto.ca

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