{"id":125963,"date":"2023-05-02T07:23:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-02T05:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=125963"},"modified":"2023-04-26T12:59:23","modified_gmt":"2023-04-26T10:59:23","slug":"photosynthesis-hack-could-lead-to-new-ways-of-generating-renewable-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/photosynthesis-hack-could-lead-to-new-ways-of-generating-renewable-energy\/","title":{"rendered":"Photosynthesis \u2018hack\u2019 could lead to new ways of generating renewable energy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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Researchers have \u2018hacked\u2019 the earliest stages of photosynthesis, the natural machine that powers the vast majority of life on Earth, and discovered new ways to extract energy from the process, a finding that could lead to new ways of generating clean fuel and renewable energy.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

An international team of physicists, chemists and biologists, led by the University of Cambridge, was able to study photosynthesis \u2013 the process by which plants, algae and some bacteria convert sunlight into energy \u2013 in live cells at an ultrafast timescale: a millionth of a millionth of a second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Despite the fact that it is one of the most well-known and well-studied processes on Earth, the researchers found that photosynthesis still has secrets to tell. Using ultrafast spectroscopic techniques to study the movement of energy, the researchers found the chemicals that can extract electrons from the molecular structures responsible for photosynthesis do so at the initial stages, rather than much later, as was previously thought. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While photosynthesis is a natural process, scientists have also been studying how it could be used to help address the climate crisis, by mimicking photosynthetic processes to generate clean fuels from sunlight and water, for example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zhang and her colleagues were originally trying to understand why a ring-shaped molecule called a quinone is able to \u2018steal\u2019 electrons from photosynthesis. Quinones are common in nature and can accept and give away electrons easily. The researchers used a technique called ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy to study how the quinones behave in photosynthetic cyanobacteria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This \u2018rewiring\u2019 of photosynthesis could improve how it deals with excess energy, and create new and more efficient ways of using its power. The results<\/a> are reported in the journal Nature<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t know as much about photosynthesis as we thought we did, and the new electron transfer pathway we found here is completely surprising,\u201d said\u00a0Dr Jenny Zhang<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0from Cambridge\u2019s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, who coordinated the research.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo one had properly studied how this molecule interplays with photosynthetic machinery at such an early point of photosynthesis: we thought we were just using a new technique to confirm what we already knew,\u201d said Zhang<\/strong>. \u201cInstead, we found a whole new pathway, and opened the black box of photosynthesis a bit further.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Using ultrafast spectroscopy to watch the electrons, the researchers found that the protein scaffold where the initial chemical reactions of photosynthesis take place is \u2018leaky\u2019, allowing electrons to escape. This leakiness could help plants protect themselves from damage from bright or rapidly changing light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe physics of photosynthesis is seriously impressive,\u201d said co-first author\u00a0Dr Tomi Baikie<\/a><\/strong>, from Cambridge\u2019s Cavendish Laboratory \u201cNormally, we work on highly ordered materials, but observing charge transport through cells opens up remarkable opportunities for new discoveries on how nature operates.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cSince the electrons from photosynthesis are dispersed through the whole system, that means we can access them,\u201d said co-first author Dr Laura Wey<\/strong>, who did the work in the Department of Biochemistry, and is now based at the University of Turku, Finland. \u201cThe fact that we didn\u2019t know this pathway existed is exciting because we could be able to harness it to extract more energy for renewables.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The researchers say that being able to extract charges at an earlier point in the process of photosynthesis, could make the process more efficient when manipulating photosynthetic pathways to generate clean fuels from the Sun. In addition, the ability to regulate photosynthesis could mean that crops could be made more able to tolerate intense sunlight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMany scientists have tried to extract electrons from an earlier point in photosynthesis, but said it wasn\u2019t possible because the energy is so buried in the protein scaffold,\u201d said Zhang<\/strong>. \u201cThe fact that we can steal them at an earlier process is mind-blowing. At first, we thought we\u2019d made a mistake: it took a while for us to convince ourselves that we\u2019d done it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Key to the discovery was the use of ultrafast spectroscopy, which allowed the researchers to follow the flow of energy in the living photosynthetic cells on a femtosecond scale \u2013 a thousandth of a trillionth of a second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe use of these ultrafast methods has allowed us to understand more about the early events in photosynthesis, on which life on Earth depends,\u201d said co-author Professor Christopher Howe from the Department of Biochemistry<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The research was supported in part by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), both part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability at University of Cambridge, the Cambridge Commonwealth, European & International Trust, and the European Union\u2019s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Jenny Zhang is a David Phillips Fellow at the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Tomi Baikie is a NanoFutures Fellow at the Cavendish Laboratory, and a Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. Laura Wey is Novo Nordisk Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Turku.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reference<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Baikie and Wey et al. \u2018Photosynthesis re-wired on the pico-second timescale<\/a>.\u2019 Nature (2023)<\/em>. DOI: 10.1038\/s41586-023-05763-9<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers have \u2018hacked\u2019 the earliest stages of photosynthesis, the natural machine that powers the vast majority of life on Earth, and discovered new ways to extract energy from the process, a finding that could lead to new ways of generating clean fuel and renewable energy. An international team of physicists, chemists and biologists, led by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"Researchers found that \u2018rewiring\u2019 of photosynthesis could improve how it deals with excess energy, and create new and more efficient ways of using its power","footnotes":""},"categories":[5571],"tags":[13519,10416,5627,10630,13634],"supplier":[7293,5159,1806,16059,1311,4257],"class_list":["post-125963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-co2-based","tag-biocatalysts","tag-circulareconomy","tag-energy","tag-hydrogen","tag-photosynthesis","supplier-bbsrc","supplier-engineering-and-physical-sciences-research-council-epsrc","supplier-ruhr-universitaet-bochum","supplier-uk-research-and-innovation-ukri","supplier-university-of-cambridge-uk","supplier-university-of-turku"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125963"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=125963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}