This illustration features a cryo-EM ’map’ of the photosystem II complex. It is a 3D reconstruction, based on two-dimensional cryo-EM images, with different protein subunits of the complex colored individually.
This illustration features a cryo-EM 'map' of the photosystem II complex. It is a 3D reconstruction, based on two-dimensional cryo-EM images, with different protein subunits of the complex colored individually. A Yale-led team of chemists has unveiled the blueprints for a key enzyme that may contain design principles for a new generation of synthetic solar fuel catalysts. The research, led by Yale's Gary Brudvig and Christopher Gisriel, uses cryo-electron microscopy on a microorganism called Synechocystis to get an extreme close-up picture of Photosystem II, the enzyme in photosynthesis that uses water as a solar fuel, enabling researchers to observe how the enzyme works. The study, which appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was co-authored by researchers from the University of California-Riverside, Boston College, and City University of New York. Photosynthesis is the mechanism by which plants and certain microorganisms, like Synechocystis , use sunlight to synthesize food from carbon dioxide and water - and fill the atmosphere with oxygen as a byproduct. At the heart of photosynthesis is Photosystem II, an enzyme that oxides water molecules, taking away their electrons to use as fuel.
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