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The biochemical capacity to use water as the source for electrons in photosynthesis evolved once, in a common ancestor of extant cyanobacteria (formerly called blue-green algae). The geological record indicates that this transforming event took place early in Earth's history, at least 2450–2320 million years ago (Ma), and, it is speculated ...
Chalk is so common in Cretaceous marine beds that the Cretaceous Period was named for these deposits. The name Cretaceous was derived from Latin creta, meaning chalk. [10] Some deposits of chalk were formed after the Cretaceous. [11] The Chalk Group is a European stratigraphic unit deposited during the late Cretaceous Period.
These organisms perform photosynthesis through organelles called chloroplasts and are believed to have originated about 2 billion years ago. [1] Comparing the genes of chloroplast and cyanobacteria strongly suggests that chloroplasts evolved as a result of endosymbiosis with cyanobacteria that gradually lost the genes required to be free-living.
During photosynthesis carbon dioxide is removed from the water, making it more basic. Also calcification removes carbon dioxide, but chemistry behind it leads to the opposite pH reaction; it makes the water more acidic. The combination of photosynthesis and calcification therefore even out each other regarding pH changes. [76]
The scientist Charles Barnes first used the word 'photosynthesis' in 1893. This word is taken from two Greek words, photos, which means light, and synthesis, which in chemistry means making a substance by combining simpler substances. So, in the presence of light, synthesis of food is called 'photosynthesis'.
Photoexcitation is the first step in a photochemical process where the reactant is elevated to a state of higher energy, an excited state.The first law of photochemistry, known as the Grotthuss–Draper law (for chemists Theodor Grotthuss and John W. Draper), states that light must be absorbed by a chemical substance in order for a photochemical reaction to take place.
Light-dependent reactions of photosynthesis at the thylakoid membrane. Photosystems are functional and structural units of protein complexes involved in photosynthesis. Together they carry out the primary photochemistry of photosynthesis: the absorption of light and the transfer of energy and electrons.
In oxygenic photosynthesis, water (H 2 O) serves as a substrate for photolysis resulting in the generation of diatomic oxygen (O 2). This is the process which returns oxygen to Earth's atmosphere. Photolysis of water occurs in the thylakoids of cyanobacteria and the chloroplasts of green algae and plants. [3]