Electron transport through single proteins, peptides and amino acids

Proteins have proven to be promising candidates for molecular electronics, showing in some cases much higher conductance than one would naively expect from their size. In particular, the blue-copper azurin extracted from Pseudomonas aeruginosa has been the subject of many experimental studies, although the exact transport mechanism is still under debate. Here I will present our efforts towards understanding the origin of such interesting effects from a theoretical perspective, analyzing both the electronic structure and the geometrical arrangement [1-3]. In addition, I will discuss results obtained on the conductance of individual heptapeptides [4] and amino acids [5], which are the building blocks of proteins, as well on the electronic properties of junctions based on Cytochrome C [6].
[1] M. P. Ruiz et al. , J. Am. Chem. Soc. 139- 43, 15337 (2017).
[2] Romero Muñiz et al., Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 20, 30392 (2018).
[3] Romero Muñiz et al., Biomolecules, 9(9), 506 (2019).
[4] Zotti et al., ACS omega. 3, 3778 (2018).
[5] Zotti et al. , Biomolecules, 9(10), 580 (2019).
[6] Fereiro et al., Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 58(34), 11852 (2019)