Photosynthetic Antenna Research Center gets underway in effort to improve yields from photosynthesis

In Missouri, the Photosynthetic Antenna Research Center — established by DOE grant earlier this year — is advancing basic science research aimed at understanding the principles of the harvesting of light and funneling of energy as applied to natural photosynthetic, biohybrid and bio-inspired antenna systems, which gather light and carry it to an organism’s reaction center, where the chemistry that creates energy takes place. Today, crops convert 1-2 percent of light energy to chemical energy, while organisms such as cyanobacteria can be no more than 15 percent photosynthetically efficient.

The goal? To increase the rate of transfer of light energy to chemical energy in the plant or organism.

The means? Eliminating redundancy in light capture and transfer.

The impact? Higher growth rates and yields for all biomass.

Photosynthesis transforms light, carbon dioxide and water into chemical energy in plants and some bacteria. The wavelike characteristic of this energy transfer process can explain its extreme efficiency, in that vast areas of phase space can be sampled effectively to find the most efficient path for energy transfer. PARC brings together 17 diverse scientists, including five from Washington University and five from Oak Ridge, Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories. In addition, there are six other academic scientists from universities in the United States and the United Kingdom and one from the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center — Richard Sayre, Ph.D., who also heads the Danforth Plant Science Center team that has received the $15 million DOE grant.

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