FIGURE 3.

Average excitation lifetime as a function of the distance of the starting chlorophyll from the reaction center chlorophyll ec-A1. Open circles represent PSI core and gap chlorophylls, whereas solid circles represent Lhca and linker chlorophylls. Excitation lifetimes for outer chlorophylls are seen to be not much longer than those for core chlorophylls, indicating an efficient coupling of Lhca subunits to the core. The mean lifetime averaged over all Lhca subunits (including linker chlorophylls) is 53.1 ps and 47.6 ps when averaged over the PSI core (including gap chlorophylls). The overall average excitation lifetime of the PSI-LHCI supercomplex is 49.4 ps. (See column C of Table 1.)