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Updated: Jun 21, 2026

Förster Resonance Energy Transfer Mapping: A New Methodology to Elucidate Global Structural Features
Published on: March 16, 2022
Theory of excitation energy transfer: from structure to function
1Institut für Chemie und Biochemie, Freie Universität Berlin, Fabeckstrasse 36a, 14195 Berlin, Germany. rth@chemie.fu-berlin.de
Abstract:
This mini-review summarizes our current theoretical knowledge about excitation energy transfer in pigment-protein complexes. The challenge for theory lies in the complexity of these systems and in the fact that the pigment-pigment and the pigment-protein interactions are of equal magnitude. The first part of this review contains an introduction to the theory of light harvesting and to structure- based calculations of the parameters of the theory. The second part provides a discussion of the standard Förster and Redfield theories of excitation energy transfer, which are valid in the limit of weak and strong pigment-pigment coupling, respectively. Afterward, we provide a description of recent extensions of the standard theories and discuss challenging problems to be solved in the future.
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