We now have microscopic details of how oxygen is formed during photosynthesis, which has eluded researchers for decades
. They arranged clusters of molecules extracted from blue-green algae on a conveyor belt, so that they were first illuminated with pulses of visible light that gave them the photons needed to start splitting water. Then the X-rays captured the arrangements of atoms during the process.After being hit by the fourth photon, a protein complex known as Photosystem II breaks down water molecules within a few millionths of a second.
However, the arrangement of other parts of PSII molecules around those oxygen atoms indicated that the oxygen formed some new structure. In this phase, oxygen atoms weren’t bound to hydrogen as they would be in water or gathered together in a larger oxygen molecule, but were probably briefly bound to another part of PSII. This step of the photosynthetic process has previously only been theorised, says Kern.
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