Latest Photosynthesis Stories
BILLERICA, Mass., April 25, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Seahorse Bioscience, the leader in cellular bioenergetic measurements, announced the launch of its newest stress test kit at the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2012. The XF Glycolysis Stress Test Kit is the first Standard for measuring glycolytic capacity in cells. Cells rely on two major pathways, mitochondrial respiration and glycolysis, to meet their energy demand. Mitochondrial respiration...
Concordia physicists modify battery-like enzyme to produce carbon-neutral energy New research at Concordia University is bringing us one step closer to clean energy. It is possible to extend the length of time a battery-like enzyme can store energy from seconds to hours, a study published in the Journal of The American Chemical Society shows. Concordia Associate Professor László Kálmán — along with his colleagues in the Department of Physics, graduate students Sasmit Deshmukh and...
Plants breathe through stomata Plant leaves are protected from drying out by an airtight wax layer. They breathe and release water through microscopic pores called stomata. Every year 40% of atmospheric CO2 and twice the volume of water found in our atmosphere pass through these pores. This means that stomata are not only important for plant development but also for our climate! It's no surprise then that these pores appear to be strictly regulated by plants. Stomata react extremely...
Imagine being able to use electricity to power your car — even if it's not an electric vehicle. Researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have for the first time demonstrated a method for converting carbon dioxide into liquid fuel isobutanol using electricity. Today, electrical energy generated by various methods is still difficult to store efficiently. Chemical batteries, hydraulic pumping and water splitting suffer from low energy-density storage...
Life deep in the seabed proceeds very slowly. But the slow-growing bacteria living many meters beneath the seafloor play an important role in the global storage of organic carbon and have a long-term effect on climate. A team of scientists from Aarhus University (Denmark) and the University of Rhode Island have developed a new method for measuring this slow life deep down in the seabed. According to URI Oceanography Professor Arthur Spivack, the relative abundance of amino acids that are...
The major difference between plant and animal cells is the photosynthetic process, which converts light energy into chemical energy. When light isn't available, energy is generated by breaking down carbohydrates and sugars, just as it is in animal and some bacterial cells. Two cellular organelles are responsible for these two processes: the chloroplasts for photosynthesis and the mitochondria for sugar breakdown. New research from Carnegie's Eva Nowack and Arthur Grossman has opened a window...
Genome analysis of “living fossil” sheds light on the evolution of plants Atmospheric oxygen really took off on our planet about 2.4 billion years ago during the Great Oxygenation Event. At this key juncture of our planet’s evolution, species had either to learn to cope with this poison that was produced by photosynthesizing cyanobacteria or they went extinct. It now seems strange to think that the gas that sustains much of modern life had such a distasteful beginning. So how and...
The evolution of plants and animals generally has been thought to occur through the passing of genes from parent to offspring and genetic modifications that happen along the way. But evolutionary biologists from Brown University and the University of Sheffield have documented another avenue, through the passing of genes from plant to plant between species with only a distant ancestral kinship. How this happened is unclear. But the researchers show that not only did a grouping of grasses...
An international team of scientists led by University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa oceanographer David Karl has documented a regular, significant and unexpected increase in the amount of particulate matter exported to the deep sea in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. They suspect the previously undocumented phenomenon may be a response to day length, a general phenomenon known as photoperiodism. Measuring the biological carbon pump Using 13 years of Hawaiʻi Ocean Time-series (HOT) data...
Plants leaves are sealed with a gas-tight wax layer to prevent water loss. Plants breathe through microscopic pores called stomata (Greek for mouths) on the surfaces of leaves. Over 40% of the carbon dioxide, CO2, in the atmosphere passes through stomata each year, as well a water volume twice that of the whole atmosphere. As the key conduits for CO2 uptake and water evaporation, stomata are critical for both our climate and plant productivity. Thus, not surprisingly, the total number and...
