Photosynthesis

Photosynthesis is a system of biological processes by which photopigment-bearing autotrophic organisms, such as most plants, algae and cyanobacteria, convert light energy—typically from sunlight—into the chemical energy necessary to fuel their metabolism. The term photosynthesis usually refers to oxygenic photosynthesis, a process that releases oxygen as a byproduct of water splitting. Photosynthetic organisms store the converted chemical energy within the bonds of intracellular organic compounds (complex compounds containing carbon), typically carbohydrates like sugars (mainly glucose, fructose and sucrose), starches, phytoglycogen and cellulose. When needing to use this stored energy, an organism's cells then metabolize the organic compounds through cellular respiration. Photosynthesis plays a critical role in producing and maintaining the oxygen content of the Earth's atmosphere, and it supplies most of the biological energy necessary for complex life on Earth. Some organisms also perform anoxygenic photosynthesis, which does not produce oxygen. Some bacteria (e.g. purple bacteria) use bacteriochlorophyll to split hydrogen sulfide as a reductant instead of water, releasing sulfur instead of oxygen, which was a dominant form of photosynthesis in the euxinic Canfield oceans during the Boring Billion. Archaea such as Halobacterium also perform a type of non-carbon-fixing anoxygenic photosynthesis, where the simpler photopigment retinal and its microbial rhodopsin derivatives are used to absorb green light and produce a proton (hydron) gradient across the cell membrane, and the subsequent ion movement powers transmembrane proton pumps to directly synthesize adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the "energy currency" of cells. Such archaeal photosynthesis might have been the earliest form of photosynthesis that evolved on Earth, as far back as the Paleoarchean, preceding that of cyanobacteria (see Purple Earth hypothesis). While the details may differ between species, the process always begins when light energy is absorbed by the reaction centers, proteins that contain photosynthetic pigments or chromophores. In plants, these pigments are chlorophylls (a...