Light–Dependent Reactions of Photosynthesis

Summary (With Ru Zhang and Johnna Roose).Photosynthesis in plants converts the energy of sunlight into chemical energy and through this process releases O2. Although photosynthesis involves many proteins and catalytic processes, it often is described as two sets of reactions, the light-dependent reactions and the carbon-fixing reactions, This lesson examines how the multiprotein complexes that make up the photosynthetic apparatus carry out these steps, their evolutionary origins, and how their inherent flexibility and feedback loops enable photosynthetic reactions to acclimate to changing light and metabolic conditions.