Colloquium - Sergei Savikhin | Department of Physics

Colloquium - Sergei Savikhin

Event Information
Event Date: 
Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - 3:30pm
Event Location: 
PHYS 104

Catching sunlight:

Visualizing dynamics and pathway of energy flow in Photosystem I

Sergei Savikhin

Department of Physics, Purdue University

Sunlight is the only source of energy that powers life on the Earth. Moreover, most of the energy used by humankind comes from sunlight in the form of fossil fuels. Billions of years of evolution resulted in the development of a highly efficient photosynthetic apparatus that can serve as a template for future biomimetic devices that will convert and store the energy of sunlight. In this talk, I will describe the function of Photosystem I (PS I) - a major photosynthetic pigment-protein complex that initiates photosynthesis in all green plants and in numerous types of bacteria and algae. I will present the results of our optical time resolved experiments combined with the structure based simulations, which reveal the dynamic and pathway of energy and electron transfer processes in PS I in real time.