Proteins can be "Good" Electronic Conductors !

Solid state Electron Transport (ETp), electronic conduction, across protein monolayers is surprisingly efficient. Length-normalized their ETp is like that of conjugated molecules; it is temperature-independent down to 15 K. That's amazing as nature hardly seems to use this feature, except for electron transfer, ET, a central, ion transport-coupled process in biology. If contacts don't limit ETp, i.e., intra-protein transport dominates, we cannot measure a transport barrier. Understanding ETp may be important also for ET, where electron injection/extraction is replaced by coupling to the contacts.  I'll show experimental data (1,2), including recent ones from us and others, which help to define  the puzzle, that's looking for a solution.

References:

1. C. Bostick et al.  Rep. Progr.Phys., 81 (2018) 026601
2. N. Amdursky et al., Adv. Mater. 42, (2014) 7142