Biological Materials

PhotosynthesisPhotosynthesis is a reaction that plants use light energy to decompose water to produce oxygen and fix carbon dioxide in organic matter such as starch. In this series of reactions, light energy is converted to chemical energy. In recent years, the development of artificial photosynthesis technology, which uses solar energy to decompose water to produce hydrogen and oxygen with high efficiency, has been underway. In addition, the development of technology to generate organic compounds (olefins), which can be used as raw materials for plastics and other chemical products, is underway by using synthetic catalysts to react the hydrogen generated by artificial photosynthesis with carbon dioxide emitted from factories. Therefore, it is important to understand the superior mechanism of plant photosynthesis, i.e., the hyperordered structure of plants, at the atomic level. This chapter introduces the hyperordered structures of proteins involved in photosynthetic electron transfer reactions.