The Department of the Air Force Materiel Command Research Laboratory awarded a $600,000 Project Grant to the University of Michigan under the Air Force Defense Research Sciences Program (CFDA 12.800) from January 15, 2021 to January 14, 2024. The grant aims to advance understanding of light-induced biological processes through computational and experimental studies of parameter sensitivity and system-environment interactions in vision and photosynthesis systems. Researchers will examine these issues in rhodopsin, bacteriorhodopsin, and the LH1 and LH2 light harvesting complexes. Initial computational work will explore parameter sensitivity and quantum chaos in rhodopsin, with plans to extend these models to bacteriorhodopsin and LH2. Experimentally, researchers will use two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy to characterize bacteriorhodopsin and compare results to prior work on LH2, seeking to identify unifying properties of system-bath coupling and observe parameter sensitivity. Efforts will also target the first single-molecule 2D spectroscopy of LH2. The University of Toronto will receive $100,000 as a sub-awardee to support complementary aspects of the experimental work.
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