Science Daily March 22, 2023 Previous approaches to ‘re-wire’ photosynthesis for higher biomass-conversion efficiencies and new reaction pathways have focused on charge extraction at terminal electron acceptors of the photosystems. Electron extraction at earlier steps, perhaps immediately from photoexcited reaction centres, would enable greater thermodynamic gains. Using in vivo ultrafast transient absorption (TA) spectroscopy an international team of researchers (UK, Finland, Germany) demonstrated the extraction of electrons directly from photoexcited PSI and PSII at early points (several picoseconds post-photo-excitation) with live cyanobacterial cells or isolated photosystems, and exogenous electron mediators. They postulated that these mediators oxidize peripheral chlorophyll pigments participating […]
Tag Archives: Artificial photosynthesis
Researchers help reveal a ‘blueprint’ for photosynthesis
Science Daily September 9, 2022 The cyanobacterial antenna structures, which are called phycobilisomes, are complex collections of pigments and proteins, which assemble into relatively massive complexes. Researchers have been unable to get the high-resolution images of intact antennae needed to understand how they capture and conduct light energy. An international team of researchers (USA – Michigan State University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UC Berkeley, Czech Republic) documented several notable results, including finding a new phycobilisome protein, observing two new ways that the phycobilisome orients its light-capturing rods that hadn’t been resolved before, and the structure of the antenna is available […]