According to a new study published in the journal ‘Nature’, Scientists have ‘hacked’ the early stages of plant photosynthesis and discovered new ways to extract energy from the process. Research could lead to new ways of production clean fuels and renewable energy.
Scientists are trying to simulate photosynthesis, the natural machine that powers most life on Earth, to produce clean fuels from the sun and water to alleviate the climate challenge.
Now, an international team led by the University of Cambridge (UK) has studied photosynthesis in living cells at an ultrafast time of one millionth of a second.
Initially, Zhang and his collaborators They were trying to understand how a ring-shaped molecule known as a quinone “steals” electrons from photosynthesis.. Quinones are often found in nature and have the ability to accept and donate electrons.
However, little did they know that They were about to discover an entirely new photosynthetic electron transfer pathway.
“No one had properly studied this molecule’s interaction with the photosynthetic machinery at such an early stage of photosynthesis: we thought we were using a new technique to confirm what we already knew,” Zhang said in a press release.
“In its place, We found a whole new way and opened up the black box of photosynthesis a little more.”
The researchers discovered that the protein scaffold, where the first chemical reactions of photosynthesis occur, is “leaky”, allowing electrons to escape. Key to this discovery was the use of ultrafast spectroscopy to observe electrons.
Can be used to generate renewable energy
Co-author of the study, Dr. “As the photosynthetic electrons are scattered throughout the system, we have access to them,” explains Laura Wey.
“It’s exciting that we don’t know this path exists, because we can take advantage of this to get more energy for renewable sources‘, he explained.
According to researchers, Altering photosynthetic pathways to produce clean fuels from the sun could be more efficient if charges could be removed earlier in photosynthesis..
Also, its ability to control photosynthesis can increase the tolerance of crops to intense sun.
“Many scientists have tried to remove electrons from an earlier point in photosynthesis, but they said it’s not possible because energy is highly embedded in the protein scaffold,” explains Zhang.
“The fact that we can ‘steal’ them at an earlier stage is mind-blowing. At first we thought we had made a mistake: It took a while to convince ourselves that we were successful,” he added.
Reference work: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05763-9
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