Oxygenic photosynthesis: history, status and perspective

Author(s):  
Wolfgang Junge

AbstractCyanobacteria and plants carry out oxygenic photosynthesis. They use water to generate the atmospheric oxygen we breathe and carbon dioxide to produce the biomass serving as food, feed, fibre and fuel. This paper scans the emergence of structural and mechanistic understanding of oxygen evolution over the past 50 years. It reviews speculative concepts and the stepped insight provided by novel experimental and theoretical techniques. Driven by sunlight photosystem II oxidizes the catalyst of water oxidation, a hetero-metallic Mn4CaO5(H2O)4 cluster. Mn3Ca are arranged in cubanoid and one Mn dangles out. By accumulation of four oxidizing equivalents before initiating dioxygen formation it matches the four-electron chemistry from water to dioxygen to the one-electron chemistry of the photo-sensitizer. Potentially harmful intermediates are thereby occluded in space and time. Kinetic signatures of the catalytic cluster and its partners in the photo-reaction centre have been resolved, in the frequency domain ranging from acoustic waves via infra-red to X-ray radiation, and in the time domain from nano- to milli-seconds. X-ray structures to a resolution of 1.9 Å are available. Even time resolved X-ray structures have been obtained by clocking the reaction cycle by flashes of light and diffraction with femtosecond X-ray pulses. The terminal reaction cascade from two molecules of water to dioxygen involves the transfer of four electrons, two protons, one dioxygen and one water. A rigorous mechanistic analysis is challenging because of the kinetic enslaving at millisecond duration of six partial reactions (4e−, 1H+, 1O2). For the time being a peroxide-intermediate in the reaction cascade to dioxygen has been in focus, both experimentally and by quantum chemistry. Homo sapiens has relied on burning the products of oxygenic photosynthesis, recent and fossil. Mankind's total energy consumption amounts to almost one-fourth of the global photosynthetic productivity. If the average power consumption equalled one of those nations with the highest consumption per capita it was four times greater and matched the total productivity. It is obvious that biomass should be harvested for food, feed, fibre and platform chemicals rather than for fuel.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanai Cardona

AbstractWhen and how oxygenic photosynthesis originated remains controversial. Wide uncertainties exist for the earliest detection of biogenic oxygen in the geochemical record or the origin of water oxidation in ancestral lineages of the phylum Cyanobacteria. A unique trait of oxygenic photosynthesis is that the process uses a Type I reaction centre with a heterodimeric core, also known as Photosystem I, made of two distinct but homologous subunits, PsaA and PsaB. In contrast, all other known Type I reaction centres in anoxygenic phototrophs have a homodimeric core. A compelling hypothesis for the evolution of a heterodimeric Type I reaction centre is that the gene duplication that allowed the divergence of PsaA and PsaB was an adaptation to incorporate photoprotective mechanisms against the formation of reactive oxygen species, therefore occurring after the origin of water oxidation to oxygen. Here I show, using sequence comparisons and Bayesian relaxed molecular clocks that this gene duplication event may have occurred in the early Archean more than 3.4 billion years ago, long before the most recent common ancestor of crown group Cyanobacteria and the Great Oxidation Event. If the origin of water oxidation predated this gene duplication event, then that would place primordial forms of oxygenic photosynthesis at a very early stage in the evolutionary history of life.


2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (6) ◽  
pp. 24-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Y. Kiang

Photosynthesis produces signs of life we can see from space: the absorbance spectrum of surface photosynthetic pigments and, with oxygenic photosynthesis, atmospheric oxygen. Since the first discovery of a planet in another solar system in 1989, there has been an explosion in the detection of exoplanets (over 1849 as of 7 November 2014) and we are getting ever closer to finding that Goldilocks planet that might harbour life. With telescope observations of these planets, oxygenic photosynthesis has been considered our most robust target ‘biosignature’ that would not appear on a lifeless planet. Since anoxygenic photosynthetic organisms do not produce unambiguously biogenic gases, there is interest in their pigments serving as spectral indicators of life. But will they look the same as on Earth, can we distinguish them from the abiotic, and what will dominate on another planet? Examples from Earth provide us with the potential to extrapolate some rules for photosynthesis to predict its signature on another planet, but there are yet things we must answer about life here to improve our confidence. In particular, given the combination of the available stellar spectrum and molecular constraints on photon energy use, can we predict the pigment spectral features that will dominate, which reductant will match, and what biogenic gases would result? We take clues from the diversity of anoxygenic photosynthetic metabolisms and three very recent examples of oxygenic photosynthesis utilizing other reaction centre (RC) chlorophylls in addition to chlorophyll a (Chl a).


2019 ◽  
Vol 126 (4) ◽  
pp. 511-537 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandrina Stirbet ◽  
Dušan Lazár ◽  
Ya Guo ◽  
Govindjee Govindjee

Abstract Background With limited agricultural land and increasing human population, it is essential to enhance overall photosynthesis and thus productivity. Oxygenic photosynthesis begins with light absorption, followed by excitation energy transfer to the reaction centres, primary photochemistry, electron and proton transport, NADPH and ATP synthesis, and then CO2 fixation (Calvin–Benson cycle, as well as Hatch–Slack cycle). Here we cover some of the discoveries related to this process, such as the existence of two light reactions and two photosystems connected by an electron transport ‘chain’ (the Z-scheme), chemiosmotic hypothesis for ATP synthesis, water oxidation clock for oxygen evolution, steps for carbon fixation, and finally the diverse mechanisms of regulatory processes, such as ‘state transitions’ and ‘non-photochemical quenching’ of the excited state of chlorophyll a. Scope In this review, we emphasize that mathematical modelling is a highly valuable tool in understanding and making predictions regarding photosynthesis. Different mathematical models have been used to examine current theories on diverse photosynthetic processes; these have been validated through simulation(s) of available experimental data, such as chlorophyll a fluorescence induction, measured with fluorometers using continuous (or modulated) exciting light, and absorbance changes at 820 nm (ΔA820) related to redox changes in P700, the reaction centre of photosystem I. Conclusions We highlight here the important role of modelling in deciphering and untangling complex photosynthesis processes taking place simultaneously, as well as in predicting possible ways to obtain higher biomass and productivity in plants, algae and cyanobacteria.


2003 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Barber

1. Introduction 712. Electron transfer in PS II 723. (Mn)4cluster and mechanism of water oxidation 734. Organization and structure of the protein subunits 755. Organization of chlorophylls and redox active cofactors 816. Implications arising from the structural models 827. Perspectives 848. Acknowledgements 869. Addendum 8610. References 87Photosystem II (PS II) is a multisubunit membrane protein complex, which uses light energy to oxidize water and reduce plastoquinone. High-resolution electron cryomicroscopy and X-ray crystallography are revealing the structure of this important molecular machine. Both approaches have contributed to our understanding of the organization of the transmembrane helices of higher plant and cyanobacterial PS II and both indicate that PS II normally functions as a dimer. However the high-resolution electron density maps derived from X-ray crystallography currently at 3·7/3·8 Å, have allowed assignments to be made to the redox active cofactors involved in the light-driven water–plastoquinone oxidoreductase activity and to the chlorophyll molecules that absorb and transfer energy to the reaction centre. In particular the X-ray work has identified density that can accommodate the four manganese atoms which catalyse the water-oxidation process. The Mn cluster is located at the lumenal surface of the D1 protein and approximately 7 Å from the redox active tyrosine residue (YZ) which acts an electron/proton transfer link to the primary oxidant P680.+. The lower resolution electron microscopy studies, however, are providing structural models of larger PS II supercomplexes that are ideal frameworks in which to incorporate the X-ray derived structures.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 129
Author(s):  
Po-Yu Kuo ◽  
Ming-Hwa Sheu ◽  
Chang-Ming Tsai ◽  
Ming-Yan Tsai ◽  
Jin-Fa Lin

The conventional shift register consists of master and slave (MS) latches with each latch receiving the data from the previous stage. Therefore, the same data are stored in two latches separately. It leads to consuming more electrical power and occupying more layout area, which is not satisfactory to most circuit designers. To solve this issue, a novel cross-latch shift register (CLSR) scheme is proposed. It significantly reduced the number of transistors needed for a 256-bit shifter register by 48.33% as compared with the conventional MS latch design. To further verify its functions, this CLSR was implemented by using TSMC 40 nm CMOS process standard technology. The simulation results reveal that the proposed CLSR reduced the average power consumption by 36%, cut the leakage power by 60.53%, and eliminated layout area by 34.76% at a supply voltage of 0.9 V with an operating frequency of 250 MHz, as compared with the MS latch.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 1021
Author(s):  
Zhanserik Nurlan ◽  
Tamara Zhukabayeva ◽  
Mohamed Othman

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are networks of thousands of nodes installed in a defined physical environment to sense and monitor its state condition. The viability of such a network is directly dependent and limited by the power of batteries supplying the nodes of these networks, which represents a disadvantage of such a network. To improve and extend the life of WSNs, scientists around the world regularly develop various routing protocols that minimize and optimize the energy consumption of sensor network nodes. This article, introduces a new heterogeneous-aware routing protocol well known as Extended Z-SEP Routing Protocol with Hierarchical Clustering Approach for Wireless Heterogeneous Sensor Network or EZ-SEP, where the connection of nodes to a base station (BS) is done via a hybrid method, i.e., a certain amount of nodes communicate with the base station directly, while the remaining ones form a cluster to transfer data. Parameters of the field are unknown, and the field is partitioned into zones depending on the node energy. We reviewed the Z-SEP protocol concerning the election of the cluster head (CH) and its communication with BS and presented a novel extended mechanism for the selection of the CH based on remaining residual energy. In addition, EZ-SEP is weighted up using various estimation schemes such as base station repositioning, altering the field density, and variable nodes energy for comparison with the previous parent algorithm. EZ-SEP was executed and compared to routing protocols such as Z-SEP, SEP, and LEACH. The proposed algorithm performed using the MATLAB R2016b simulator. Simulation results show that our proposed extended version performs better than Z-SEP in the stability period due to an increase in the number of active nodes by 48%, in efficiency of network by the high packet delivery coefficient by 16% and optimizes the average power consumption compared to by 34.


2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (16) ◽  
pp. 4935-4940 ◽  
Author(s):  
Na Song ◽  
Javier J. Concepcion ◽  
Robert A. Binstead ◽  
Jennifer A. Rudd ◽  
Aaron K. Vannucci ◽  
...  

In aqueous solution above pH 2.4 with 4% (vol/vol) CH3CN, the complex [RuII(bda)(isoq)2] (bda is 2,2′-bipyridine-6,6′-dicarboxylate; isoq is isoquinoline) exists as the open-arm chelate, [RuII(CO2-bpy-CO2−)(isoq)2(NCCH3)], as shown by 1H and 13C-NMR, X-ray crystallography, and pH titrations. Rates of water oxidation with the open-arm chelate are remarkably enhanced by added proton acceptor bases, as measured by cyclic voltammetry (CV). In 1.0 M PO43–, the calculated half-time for water oxidation is ∼7 μs. The key to the rate accelerations with added bases is direct involvement of the buffer base in either atom–proton transfer (APT) or concerted electron–proton transfer (EPT) pathways.


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