Photosynthetic Antenna Research Center (PARC) -- EFRC

This project, sponsored by the Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) program of the Basic Energy Sciences division of the US Department of Energy continues research by the Photosynthetic Antenna Research Center (PARC) at Washington University in St. Louis. PARC was established in 2009 as one of the first round of EFRCs.

Photosynthetic organisms convert the energy in sunlight into chemical energy. This is a complex process that requires dozens of molecular complexes to work together to absorb the light, carry out the initial storage into unstable chemical compounds and finally to store the energy in stable but energy-rich compounds such as sugars. The first step in the process is light absorption, where a bundle of light energy called a photon interacts with a chlorophyll or other pigment molecule. The energy in the photon is transferred to the pigment and is then passed from one molecule to another until it is delivered to a special complex called the reaction center, where the conversion into chemical energy takes place. The photon absorption and energy transfer take place in submicroscopic molecular complexes that are collectively known as an antenna, in analogy to other types of antennas such as satellite dishes that collect energy. The goals and scope of research in PARC is to understand this antenna system in molecular detail and to mimic it with artificial complexes that may form the basis for next-generation systems for solar energy conversion.

PARC is organized around three programmatic themes: 1) Natural Antennas: Structure and Efficiency, 2) Biohybrid and Bioinspired Antennas: Design and Characterization and 3) Antenna-Reaction Center Interface: Organization and Delivery. The PARC project is a program in basic scientific research aimed at understanding the principles of light harvesting and energy funneling in photosynthetic systems.

Methods that will be utilized in the PARC research program include: ultrafast laser fluorescence and transient absorption spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, X-ray crystallography, neutron diffraction and scattering, electron microscopy, scanning probe microscopy, hyperspectral imaging spectroscopy, density functional theory, molecular dynamics calculations, surface chemistry, synthetic chemistry, de novo protein design, and recombinant DNA technology.

Significant educational and outreach efforts will be made at the K-12, undergraduate, graduate and community levels. Advanced electronic communication and networking techniques will be used to keep the team in constant communication, and a yearly 'all hands' meeting will bring all the participants together to discuss progress, plans and strengthen collaborations.

This project will bring together a core of twenty-one diverse scientists to form an international interdisciplinary team that brings extraordinary breadth and depth of intellectual and technical expertise to this important research area. The team includes: Robert E. Blankenship, Washington University in St. Louis, Director; Dewey Holten, Washington University in St. Louis, Associate Director; David Bocian, University of California, Riverside; Donald Bryant, The Pennsylvania State University; Richard Cogdell, University of Glasgow, UK; P. Leslie Dutton, University of Pennsylvania; Michael Gross, Washington University in St. Louis; Neil Hunter, University of Sheffield, UK; Jonathan Lindsey, North Carolina State University; Christine Kirmaier, Washington University in St. Louis; Paul Loach, Northwestern University; Gabriel Montaño, Los Alamos National Laboratory; Christopher Moser, University of Pennsylvania; Dean Myles, Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Himadri Pakrasi, Washington University in St. Louis; Pamela Parkes-Loach, Northwestern University; Gregory Scholes, Princeton University; Klaus Schulten, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Andrew Shreve, University of New Mexico; Jerilyn Timlin, Sandia National Laboratories and Volker Urban, Oak Ridge National Laboratory.