JUNE 14, 2023
Aliyah Kovner
“In their study, Fleming, co-lead author Birgitta Whaley, a senior faculty scientist in the Energy Sciences Area at Berkeley Lab, and their research groups showed that a single photon can indeed initiate the first step of photosynthesis in photosynthetic purple bacteria. Because all photosynthetic organisms use similar processes and share an evolutionary ancestor, the team is confident that photosynthesis in plants and algae works the same way. “Nature invented a very clever trick,” Fleming said.
How living systems use light
Based on how efficient photosynthesis is at converting sunlight into energy-rich molecules, scientists have long assumed that a single photon was all it took to initiate the reaction, wherein photons pass energy to electrons that then trade places with electrons in different molecules, eventually creating the precursor ingredients for the production of sugars. After all, the sun doesn’t provide that many photons – only a thousand photons arrive at a single chlorophyll molecule per second on a sunny day – yet the process occurs reliably across the planet.
However, “no one had ever backed up that assumption with a demonstration,” said first author Quanwei Li, a joint postdoctoral researcher who develops new experimental techniques with quantum light in the Fleming and Whaley groups.
And, further complicating matters, a great deal of the research that has unraveled precise details about later steps of photosynthesis was performed by triggering photosynthetic molecules with powerful, ultra-fast laser pulses.
“There’s a huge difference in intensity between a laser and sunlight – a typical focused laser beam is a million times brighter than sunlight,” said Li. Even if you manage to produce a weak beam with an intensity matching that of sunlight, they are still very different due to quantum properties of light called photon statistics. Since no one has seen the photon get absorbed, we don’t know what difference it makes what kind of photon it is, he explained.
“But just like you need to understand each particle to build a quantum computer, we need to study the quantum properties of living systems to truly understand them, and to make efficient artificial systems that generate renewable fuels.”– Quanwei Li
CCCRdg note: The energy source for photosynthesis is nuclear fusion from the Sun. The 1388.888 H Line solar energy travels to Earth where it is used as the fuel for photosynthetic chemical reactions.
Universal solar light speed processing fundamentals :
300,000,000 m/s SOL
185,185,185 mi/s
0.54 m Q of data exchanged in every photonic light packet