PREDICTIONS OF THE INELASTIC ELECTRON TUNNELING MECHANISM FROM BACTERIOPHEOPHYTIN TO THE PRIMARY QUINONE IN MODIFIED BACTERIAL PHOTOSYNTHETIC REACTION CENTERS

摘要

Electron transfer (ET) reactions play important roles in the photosynthesis processes. In these ET systems, donor cofactors and acceptor cofactors that are bound to protein are long separated (10-30 Angstrom) and the super-exchange mechanism works. Ingeneral, the rate of the long-range ET in protein is expressed by a well-known Marcus formula (Marcus et al 1985)Here T_(DA) is the electron tunneling matrix element and (FC) is the thermally averaged Franck-Condon factor. In equation 1, Fermi's golden rule and Condon approximation, in which T_(DA) is assumed to be independent of the nuclear dynamics, are used. Inrecent years, theoretical interest for the effect of thermal fluctuation of protein conformation on T_(DA) has been accumulated (Skourtis et al 2001).