Variety, the spice of life and essential for robustness in excitation energy transfer in light-harvesting complexes.

For over a decade there has been some significant excitement and speculation that quantum effects may be important in the excitation energy transport process in the light harvesting complexes of certain bacteria and algae, in particular via the Fenna-Matthews-Olsen (FMO) complex. Whilst the excitement may have waned somewhat with the realisation that the observed long-lived oscillations in two-dimensional electronic spectra of FMO are probably due to vibronic coherences, it remains a question whether these coherences may play any important role. We review our recent work showing how important the site-to-site variation in coupling between chloroplasts in FMO and their protein scaffold environment is for energy transport in FMO and investigate the role of vibronic modes in this transport.