A New Form of Chlorophyll?
Researchers may have found a new form of chlorophyll, the pigment that plants, algae and cyanobacteria use to obtain energy from light through photosynthesis . Preliminary findings published August 19 in Science suggest that the newly discovered molecule, dubbed chlorophyll f, has a distinct chemical composition when compared with the four known forms of chlorophyll and can absorb more near-infrared light than is typical for the photosynthetic pigments. Chlorophyll f, which was extracted from cultures of cyanobacteria and other oxygenic microorganisms, may allow certain photosynthetic life forms to harvest energy from wavelengths of light that many of their competitors cannot use."This is the most red-shifted chlorophyll we have found in nature," says Min Chen , a biologist at The University of Sydney in Australia and lead author of the study. "That means that organisms...