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)