Nature has had billions of years to perfect photosynthesis, which directly or indirectly supports virtually all life on Earth. In that time, the process has achieved almost 100 percent efficiency in transporting the energy of sunlight from receptors to reaction centers where it can be harnessed — a performance vastly better than even the best solar cells. One way plants achieve this efficiency is by making use of the exotic effects of quantum mechanics — effects sometimes known as “quantum weirdness.” These effects, which include the ability of a particle to exist in more than one place at a time, have now been used by engineers at MIT, together with collaborators, to achieve a significant efficiency boost in a light-harvesting system. Surprisingly, the MIT researchers achieved this new approach to solar energy not with high-tech materials or microchips, but by using genetically engineered viruses. This achievement in coupling quantum research and genetic manipulation was described online on October 12, 2015 in Nature Materials in an article titled “Enhanced Energy Transport in Genetically Engineered Excitonic Networks.” A video describing this new work is available within the MIT press release for which a link is provided below. This advance was the work of MIT professors Angela Belcher, an expert on engineering viruses to carry out energy-related tasks, and Seth Lloyd, an expert on quantum theory and its potential applications; research associate Dr. Heechul Park; and 14 collaborators at MIT and in Italy. Dr. Lloyd, a professor of mechanical engineering, explains that in photosynthesis, a photon hits a receptor called a chromophore, which in turn produces an exciton — a quantum particle of energy.Login Or Register To Read Full Story