Formation of sucrose from malate in germinating castor beans. I. Conversion of malate to phosphoenol-pyruvate

composed of all the valence electrons of the specimen. In this case, the electrons of the metal are coupled via the photon gas; their actions are not completely independent. Such a situation is not the case in the usual photosynthetic system; equilibrium or quasiequilibrium ideas may not be applied. In this situation each photosynthetic event is completely independent of the other events taking place at other sites in the material. Although in such a complicated system as the photosynthetic unit there could conceivably be a number of events which would use up the electronic energy imparted by photon absorption (such as fluorescence, radiationless transition, etc.). the individual photoelectron interactions are beyond the region of applicability of the second law of thermodynamics and are limited only by the conservation of energy and momentum. ACKNOWLEDGMENT