Focusing on the ancient green sulphur bacteria, research fellows Dr Alex Chin and Dr Nicholas Hine are investigating the early stages of photosynthesis – the process in which plants and some bacteria capture the sun’s light energy and convert it into chemical energy, or food.
“The light-harvesting states of photosynthesis are highly efficient in many species, and happen extremely fast – within a nanosecond, if not picoseconds,” said Chin. “We’re very interested in that efficiency and how it’s managed. Biology has evolved phenomenally subtle systems to funnel light energy around and channel it to the right places. It has also become incredibly good at building tiny devices that work with high efficiency, and at replicating them millions of times.”
Green sulphur bacteria are found in places with very little light, including at the bottom of the oceans, and have existed for billions of years by harvesting light extremely efficiently in order to photosynthesise. Chin and Hine are trying to discover the intimate detail of the bacteria’s clever solutions to capturing and converting light energy. “The idea is to tease out what the trick is,” said Chin. “We’d like to learn, understand and in some sense copy this in artificial systems.”
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Image Credit: Jacqueline Garget
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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