New type of photosynthesis discovered

June 19, 2018 09:51 pm | Updated 09:51 pm IST

 ‘This is an important discovery in photosynthesis’.

‘This is an important discovery in photosynthesis’.

If your class six teacher taught you that water, white light and chlorophyll are needed for photosynthesis, here is your chance to prove them wrong. A new study published in Science says that certain bacteria don't need white light, and instead use far-red light for photosynthesis.

The wavelength of visible light or white light is 400 to 700 nanometre, and till now botanists and plant biologists believed that all plants used red light( 680 to 700 nm) for oxygenic photosynthesis. The new study shows that many cyanobacteria or blue-green algae can carry out photosynthesis in the far red light or near infrared light of 750 nm.

New chlorophyll

Another interesting find of the study is that in cyanobacteria, a different kind of chlorophyll was involved in photosynthesis. All photosynthetic organisms use chlorophyll-a for the process, but the researchers found that when cyanobacteria was grown in near- infrared light, chlorophyll a shuts down and a special chlorophyll, chlorophyll-f, performs the same task.

Chlorophyll-f, which was long believed to be a helper in harvesting light, has now been found to play an important role in photosynthesis in shaded environments.

“Finding a type of photosynthesis that works beyond the red limit changes our understanding of the energy requirements of photosynthesis. This provides insights into light energy use and into mechanisms that protect the systems against damage by light,” says co-author Dr Andrea Fantuzzi, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College, London in a release.

Though another cyanobacterium, Acaryochloris, has already been reported to be using beyond red limit, it was thought to be one of a kind. But this study has shown that the new method is widespread and could even represent a new type of photosynthesis unknown to science. These insights can help researchers engineer food crops that can grow in wide light ranges.

“This is an important discovery in photosynthesis, a process that plays a crucial role in the biology of the crops that feed the world. Discoveries like this push the boundaries of our understanding of life…,” said Peter Burlinson, lead for frontier bioscience at Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, UK, who was not involved with the study.

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