Journal
CELL
Volume 179, Issue 5, Pages 1098-+Publisher
CELL PRESS
DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2019.10.021
Keywords
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Categories
Funding
- Arizona State University
- Research Corporation for Science Advancement
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- United States, Lightworks Foundation
- Flinn Foundation
- NIH [P41-GM104601, R01-GM067887]
- Center for Physics of Living Cells [NSF PHY-1430124]
- NSF [MCB1616790]
- Department of Chemistry, the School of Chemical Sciences
- Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Contrat Plan Etat Region (CPER) IT2MP
- European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (Canada)
- Canada Research Chairs Program
- Alberta Innovates Technology Futures
- Canada Foundation of Innovation
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) [KL 1299/12-1]
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (UK) [BB/M000265/1]
- European Research Council [338895]
- Photosynthetic Antenna Research Center (PARC), an Energy Frontier Research Center - Department of Energy, Office of Science, and Office of Basic Energy Sciences [DE-SC0001035]
- Office of Science, Department of Energy [DE-AC05-00OR22725]
- BBSRC [BB/M000265/1] Funding Source: UKRI
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We report a 100-million atom-scale model of an entire cell organelle, a photosynthetic chromatophore vesicle from a purple bacterium, that reveals the cascade of energy conversion steps culminating in the generation of ATP from sunlight. Molecular dynamics simulations of this vesicle elucidate how the integral membrane complexes influence local curvature to tune pholoexcitation of pigments. Brownian dynamics of small molecules within the chromatophore probe the mechanisms of directional charge transport under various pH and salinity conditions. Reproducing phenotypic properties from atomistic details, a kinetic model evinces that low-light adaptations of the bacterium emerge as a spontaneous outcome of optimizing the balance between the chromatophore's structural integrity and robust energy conversion. Parallels are drawn with the more universal mitochondrial bioenergetic machinery, from whence molecular-scale insights into the mechanism of cellular aging are inferred. Together, our integrative method and spectroscopic experiments pave the way to first-principles modeling of whole living cells.
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