Fluorescence Excitation Spectra from Individual Chlorosomes of the Green Sulfur Bacterium Chlorobaculum tepidum.

We performed polarization-resolved fluorescence excitation spectroscopy on individual chlorosomes from the photosynthetic green sulfur bacterium Chlorobaculum tepidum. The experiments were conducted at room temperature and under cryogenic conditions. All spectra showed a strong intensity modulation as a function of the polarization of the incident radiation, and we determined the modulation ratio as a function of the excitation energy. Under ambient conditions this ratio shows only little variation across the absorption band, whereas the low-temperature experiments clearly revealed that the broad absorption band around 740 nm consists of several spectral contributions.