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These pigments enter a high-energy state upon absorbing a photon which they can release in the form of chemical energy. This can occur via light-driven pumping of ions across a biological membrane (e.g. in the case of the proton pump bacteriorhodopsin ) or via excitation and transfer of electrons released by photolysis (e.g. in the photosystems ...
A photosynthetic pigment (accessory pigment; chloroplast pigment; antenna pigment) is a pigment that is present in chloroplasts or photosynthetic bacteria and captures the light energy necessary for photosynthesis. List of photosynthetic pigments (in order of increasing polarity): Carotene: an orange pigment; Xanthophyll: a yellow pigment
The reaction center contains two pigments that serve to collect and transfer the energy from photon absorption: BChl and Bph. BChl roughly resembles the chlorophyll molecule found in green plants, but, due to minor structural differences, its peak absorption wavelength is shifted into the infrared , with wavelengths as long as 1000 nm.
The pigments which absorb light at the highest energy level are found furthest from the reaction center. On the other hand, the pigments with the lowest energy level are more closely associated with the reaction center. Energy will be efficiently transferred from the outer part of the antenna complex to the inner part.
The following is a breakdown of the energetics of the photosynthesis process from Photosynthesis by Hall and Rao: [6]. Starting with the solar spectrum falling on a leaf, 47% lost due to photons outside the 400–700 nm active range (chlorophyll uses photons between 400 and 700 nm, extracting the energy of one 700 nm photon from each one)
This small difference makes chlorophyll b absorb light with wavelengths between 400 and 500 nm more efficiently. Carotenoids are long linear organic molecules that have alternating single and double bonds along their length. Such molecules are called polyenes. Two examples of carotenoids are lycopene and β-carotene. These molecules also absorb ...
The light-harvesting system of PSI uses multiple copies of the same transmembrane proteins used by PSII. The energy of absorbed light (in the form of delocalized, high-energy electrons) is funneled into the reaction center, where it excites special chlorophyll molecules (P700, with maximum light absorption at 700 nm) to a higher energy level.
Each absorbed photon causes the formation of an exciton (an electron excited to a higher energy state) in the pigment molecule. The energy of the exciton is transferred to a chlorophyll molecule ( P680 , where P stands for pigment and 680 for its absorption maximum at 680 nm) in the reaction center of photosystem II via resonance energy transfer .