The volume is intended as an introduction to the physical principles governing the main processes that occur in photosynthesis, with emphasis on the light reactions and electron transport chain. A unique feature of the photosynthetic apparatus is the fact that the molecular structures are known in detail for essentially all of its major components. The availability of this data has allowed their functions to be probed at a very fundamental level to discover the design principles that have guided evolution. Other volumes on photosynthesis have tended to focus on single components or on a specific set of biophysical techniques, and the authors’ goal is to provide new researchers with an introduction to the overall field of photosynthesis.
The book is divided into sections, each dealing with one of the main physical processes in photosynthetic energy conversion. Each section has several chapters each describing the role that a basic physical property, such as charge or spin, plays in governing the process being discussed. The chapters proceed in an orderly fashion from a quantum mechanical description of early processes on an ultrafast timescale to a classical treatment of electron transfer and catalysis on a biochemical timescale culminating in evolutionary principles on a geological timescale.
Author(s): John Golbeck, Art van der Est (eds.)
Series: Biophysics for the Life Sciences 11
Edition: 1
Publisher: Springer-Verlag New York
Year: 2014
Language: English
Pages: 462
Tags: Biophysics and Biological Physics; Nuclear Medicine; Plant Biochemistry; Biomedicine general; Plant Sciences; Particle and Nuclear Physics
Front Matter....Pages i-xi
Front Matter....Pages 1-1
Structure-Based Calculation of Pigment–Protein and Excitonic Pigment–Pigment Coupling in Photosynthetic Light-Harvesting Complexes....Pages 3-44
Electron–Phonon and Exciton–Phonon Coupling in Light Harvesting, Insights from Line-Narrowing Spectroscopies....Pages 45-77
Photosynthetic Energy Transfer and Charge Separation in Higher Plants....Pages 79-118
Front Matter....Pages 119-119
Tunneling in Electron Transport....Pages 121-139
Spin in Photosynthetic Electron Transport....Pages 141-170
Energy Changes in Photosynthetic Electron Transport: Probing Photosynthesis by Pulsed Photoacoustics....Pages 171-190
Front Matter....Pages 191-191
Mechanism of Primary Charge Separation in Photosynthetic Reaction Centers....Pages 193-240
Effects of Quasi-Equilibrium States on the Kinetics of Electron Transfer and Radical Pair Stabilisation in Photosystem I....Pages 241-274
Energetics of Cofactors in Photosynthetic Complexes: Relationship Between Protein–Cofactor Interactions and Midpoint Potentials....Pages 275-295
Front Matter....Pages 297-297
The Radical Intermediates of Photosystem II....Pages 299-320
Structure-Function Relationships in the Mn 4 CaO 5 Water-Splitting Cluster....Pages 321-349
Water and Oxygen Diffusion Pathways Within Photosystem II. Computational Studies of Controlled Substrate Access and Product Release....Pages 351-380
Front Matter....Pages 381-381
From Ionizing Radiation to Photosynthesis....Pages 383-432
Origin of Oxygenic Photosynthesis from Anoxygenic Type I and Type II Reaction Centers....Pages 433-450
Back Matter....Pages 451-462
