Scientists have made an amazing discovery in the early stages of photosynthesis, and they could very well revolutionize renewal energy technologies as we know them.
In their quest to extract electrons from an otherwise well-known process in the early stage of the photosynthetic process, the researchers stumbled upon an entirely new electron transfer pathway. Some may remember this from their Biology 101 classes, which is the metabolic method that extracts the most energy from food.
From this, the study authors think that this new understanding of photosynthesis could actually create new and more efficient ways to harness the power to generate biofuels in the process.
Comprised of scientists from all over the globe, the research team first set out to better understand why a ring-shaped molecule known as ‘quinone’ has the ability to steal electrons from the photosynthetic process.
Common in nature, quinones are able to easily accept and give away electrons. The study team used a technique called ultrafast spectroscopy to observe how exactly quinones behave in photosynthetic cyanobacteria, which obtain their energy through photosynthesis, just like plants and algae.
They were able to observe the process at an increased timescale of a millionth of a millionth of a second. As a result, the researchers found that the protein scaffold, where the first chemical reactions of photosynthesis take place, is actually leaky, allowing some electrons to escape.
The study showed that this leakiness could help plants protect themselves from damage from either bright or rapidly changing light. According to the researchers, their ability to extract electrons at an earlier point in photosynthesis may just come in handy when they try and manipulate the photosynthetic pathway to create clean, renewable fuel from the sun.
At the same time, the scientists also believe that the ability to regulate photosynthesis may also enable crops to become ‘more tolerant to intense bouts of sunlight.’
One of the study’s authors, Dr. Jenny Zhang, from the University of Cambridge, “We didn’t know as much about photosynthesis as we thought we did, and the new electron transfer pathway we found here is completely surprising.”
She went on to say, “We thought we were just using a new technique to confirm what we already knew. Instead, we found a whole new pathway, and opened the black box of photosynthesis a bit further.”
“At first, we thought we’d made a mistake: it took a while for us to convince ourselves that we’d done it. The fact that we can steal them at an earlier process is mind-blowing,” she added.
Photosynthesis is a natural phenomenon, and scientists have been studying potential ways in which they can harness it to combat the climate crisis. One example of this is how scientists have been looking for ways to copy the process of generating clean fuels from water and sunlight.
Now based at the University of Turku in Finland, Dr. Laura Wey, told Cambridge University Press that since ‘electrons from photosynthesis are dispersed through the whole system, more of them can be accessed.’
“The fact that we didn’t know this pathway existed is exciting because we could be able to harness it to extract more energy for renewables,” said Dr. Wey.
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