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Photosynthesis is a process used by plants and other organisms to convert light energy into chemical energy that, through cellular respiration, can later be released to fuel the organism's activities. Some of this chemical energy is stored in carbohydrate molecules, such as sugars and starches, which are synthesized from carbon dioxide and water – hence the name photosynthesis, from the Greek phōs, "light", and synthesis, "putting together". Most plants, algae, and cyanobacteria perform photosynthesis; such organisms are called photoautotrophs. Photosynthesis is largely responsible for producing and maintaining the oxygen content of the Earth's atmosphere, and supplies most of the energy necessary for life on Earth.
Photosystems are functional and structural units of protein complexes involved in photosynthesis. Together they carry out the primary photochemistry of photosynthesis: the absorption of light and the transfer of energy and electrons. Photosystems are found in the thylakoid membranes of plants, algae, and cyanobacteria. These membranes are located inside the chloroplasts of plants and algae, and in the cytoplasmic membrane of photosynthetic bacteria. There are two kinds of photosystems: PSI and PSII.
Hartmut Michel is a German biochemist, who received the 1988 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for determination of the first crystal structure of an integral membrane protein, a membrane-bound complex of proteins and co-factors that is essential to photosynthesis.
The light-harvesting complex is an array of protein and chlorophyll molecules embedded in the thylakoid membrane of plants and cyanobacteria, which transfer light energy to one chlorophyll a molecule at the reaction center of a photosystem.
A photosynthetic reaction center is a complex of several proteins, pigments and other co-factors that together execute the primary energy conversion reactions of photosynthesis. Molecular excitations, either originating directly from sunlight or transferred as excitation energy via light-harvesting antenna systems, give rise to electron transfer reactions along the path of a series of protein-bound co-factors. These co-factors are light-absorbing molecules (also named chromophores or pigments) such as chlorophyll and pheophytin, as well as quinones. The energy of the photon is used to excite an electron of a pigment. The free energy created is then used, via a chain of nearby electron acceptors, for a transfer of hydrogen atoms (as protons and electrons) from H2O or hydrogen sulfide towards carbon dioxide, eventually producing glucose. These electron transfer steps ultimately result in the conversion of the energy of photons to chemical energy.
A light-harvesting complex consists of a number of chromophores which are complex subunit proteins that may be part of a larger super complex of a photosystem, the functional unit in photosynthesis. It is used by plants and photosynthetic bacteria to collect more of the incoming light than would be captured by the photosynthetic reaction center alone. The light which is captured by the chromophores is capable of exciting molecules from their ground state to a higher energy state, known as the excited state. This excited state does not last very long and is known to be short-lived.
The Fenna–Matthews–Olson (FMO) complex is a water-soluble complex and was the first pigment-protein complex (PPC) to be structure analyzed by x-ray spectroscopy. It appears in green sulfur bacteria and mediates the excitation energy transfer from light-harvesting chlorosomes to the membrane-embedded bacterial reaction center (bRC). Its structure is trimeric (C3-symmetry). Each of the three monomers contains eight bacteriochlorophyll a molecules. They are bound to the protein scaffold via chelation of their central magnesium atom either to amino acids of the protein or water-bridged oxygen atoms.
Quantum biology is the study of applications of quantum mechanics and theoretical chemistry to aspects of biology that cannot be accurately described by the classical laws of physics. An understanding of fundamental quantum interactions is important because they determine the properties of the next level of organization in biological systems.
Photosynthetic reaction centre proteins are main protein components of photosynthetic reaction centres (RCs) of bacteria and plants. They are transmembrane proteins embedded in the chloroplast thylakoid or bacterial cell membrane.
The antenna complex in purple photosynthetic bacteria are protein complexes responsible for the transfer of solar energy to the photosynthetic reaction centre. Purple bacteria, particularly Rhodopseudomonos acidophilia of purple non-sulfur bacteria, have been one of the main groups of organisms used to study bacterial antenna complexes so much is known about this group's photosynthetic components. It is one of the many independent types of light-harvesting complex used by various photosynthetic organisms.
Graham R. Fleming is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley and member of the Kavli Energy NanoScience Institute based at UCB.
Peter Leslie Dutton FRS is a British biochemist, and Eldridge Reeves Johnson Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a 2013 recipient of the John Scott Award for his work on electron transfer, studying the organization of electrons in cells and the mechanisms by which they convert light or oxygen into energy for the cell.
Rhodoblastus acidophilus, formerly known as Rhodopseudomonas acidophila, is a gram-negative purple non-sulfur bacteria. The cells are rod-shaped or ovoid, 1.0 to 1.3 μm wide and 2 to 5 μm long. They are motile by means of polar flagella, and they multiply by budding. The photopigments consist of bacteriochlorophyll a and carotenoids of the spirilloxanthin series. All strains can grow either under anaerobic conditions in the light or under microaerophilic to aerobic conditions in the dark.
Roseiflexus castenholzii is a heterotrophic, thermophilic, filamentous anoxygenetic phototroph (FAP) bacterium. This species is in one of two genera of FAPs that lack chlorosomes. R. castenholzii was first isolated from red-colored bacterial mats located Nakabusa hot springs in Japan. Because this organism is a phototroph, it utilizes photosynthesis to fix carbon dioxide and build biomolecules. R. castenholzii has three photosynthetic complexes: light-harvesting, reaction center, and light-harvesting - reaction center.
James Henderson Naismith is Professor of Structural Biology at the University of Oxford, former Director of the Research Complex at Harwell and Director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute. He previously served as Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Chemical Biology at the University of St Andrews. He was a member of Council of the Royal Society (2021-2022). He is currently the Vice-Chair of Council of the European X-ray Free Electron Laser and Vice-President (non-clinical) of The Academy of Medical Sciences.
Alfred William Rutherford FRS is Professor and Chair in Biochemistry of Solar energy in the Department of Life sciences at Imperial College London.
Klaus Schulten was a German-American computational biophysicist and the Swanlund Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Schulten used supercomputing techniques to apply theoretical physics to the fields of biomedicine and bioengineering and dynamically model living systems. His mathematical, theoretical, and technological innovations led to key discoveries about the motion of biological cells, sensory processes in vision, animal navigation, light energy harvesting in photosynthesis, and learning in neural networks.
Nigel Shaun Scrutton is a British biochemist and biotechnology innovator known for his work on enzyme catalysis, biophysics and synthetic biology. He is Director of the UK Future Biomanufacturing Research Hub, Director of the Fine and Speciality Chemicals Synthetic Biology Research Centre (SYNBIOCHEM), and Co-founder, Director and Chief Scientific Officer of the 'fuels-from-biology' company C3 Biotechnologies Ltd. He is Professor of Enzymology and Biophysical Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Manchester. He is former Director of the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB).
Gabriela S. Schlau-Cohen is a Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Career Development Associate Professor at MIT in the Department of Chemistry.
Alexander Glazer was a Professor of the Graduate School in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He had a passion for protein chemistry and structure function relationships. He also had a longstanding interest in light-harvesting complexes in cyanobacteria and red algae called phycobilisomes. He had also spent more than 10 years working on the human genome project where he has investigated methods for DNA detection and sequencing which most notably includes the development of fluorescent reagents involved in cell labeling. Most recently, he had focused his studies on issues in environmental sciences. He died on July 18, 2021 in Orinda, California
References
- ↑ Cogdell, Richard. "School of Molecular Biosciences". University of Glasgow. Retrieved 2 March 2023.
- ↑ "Society Fellows among new BBSRC Council members". Royal Society of Biology. Retrieved 2 March 2023.
- ↑ McDermot. "Crystal structure of an integral membrane light-harvesting complex from photosynthetic bacteria". Nature. 374 (6522): 517. doi:10.1038/374517a0.
- ↑ "Synthetic biology and industrial biotech". University of Glasgow. Retrieved 2 March 2023.
- ↑ Cogdell, Richard. "Editorial". Interface. The Royal Society. Retrieved 2 March 2023.
- ↑ Cogdell, Richard. "Fellow detail page". The Royal Society. Retrieved 2 March 2023.
- ↑ Cogdell, Richard. "Fellowship". Royal Society of Edinburgh. Retrieved 2 March 2023.
- ↑ "DAP - fact sheet" (PDF). Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation. Retrieved 2 March 2023.