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In general outline, photosynthesis is the opposite of cellular respiration: while photosynthesis is a process of reduction of carbon dioxide to carbohydrates, cellular respiration is the oxidation of carbohydrates or other nutrients to carbon dioxide. Nutrients used in cellular respiration include carbohydrates, amino acids and fatty acids.
The energy of absorbed light (in the form of delocalized, high-energy electrons) is funneled into the reaction center, where it excites special chlorophyll molecules (P700, with maximum light absorption at 700 nm) to a higher energy level. The process occurs with astonishingly high efficiency.
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]
Many plants lose much of the remaining energy on growing roots. Most crop plants store ~0.25% to 0.5% of the sunlight in the product (corn kernels, potato starch, etc.). Photosynthesis increases linearly with light intensity at low intensity, but at higher intensity this is no longer the case (see Photosynthesis-irradiance curve). Above about ...
All physical and chemical systems in the universe follow the second law of thermodynamics and proceed in a downhill, i.e., exergonic, direction.Thus, left to itself, any physical or chemical system will proceed, according to the second law of thermodynamics, in a direction that tends to lower the free energy of the system, and thus to expend energy in the form of work.
There are multiple hypotheses for how oxygenic photosynthesis evolved. The loss hypothesis states that PSI and PSII were present in anoxygenic ancestor cyanobacteria from which the different branches of anoxygenic bacteria evolved. [5] The fusion hypothesis states that the photosystems merged later through horizontal gene transfer. [5]
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.
The two main processes that contribute to ecosystem respiration are photosynthesis and cellular respiration. Photosynthesis uses carbon-dioxide and water, in the presence of sunlight to produce glucose and oxygen whereas cellular respiration uses glucose and oxygen to produce carbon-dioxide, water, and energy.