May 10 2010
Purple bacteria, one of the earliest life species on Earth, are known to play a crucial part in sustaining the life cycle. This microscopic single celled organism utilizes sunlight as energy source. Neil Johnson, who heads an inter-disciplinary research team in complexity at the University of Miami’s College of Arts and Sciences, opines that the cellular arrangement of purple bacteria can be implemented in solar panels among other energy conversion systems to provide a more efficient method to harness sunlight.
Having conducted a study on purple bacteria, Neil and his team from Colombia’s Universidad de los Andes share their study findings in the latest edition of ‘Physical Review Letters’ titled ‘Light-harvesting in bacteria exploits a critical interplay between transport and trapping dynamics’.
In general, the purple bacteria’s light gathering mechanism contained in the photosynthetic membrane captures the photons of the solar energy. Once inside the membrane, the photons are transformed into chemical energy. The photosynthetic apparatus consists of two light gathering complexes. The first complex collects the photons and sends them to the second complex, termed the reaction center (RC), in which chemical energy is generated from solar energy.
The study finds that purple bacteria adapt themselves to different intensities of light by altering the light harvesting mechanism’s arrangement.
The ability of the purple bacteria to repair and grow by themselves has led scientists to take efforts to coat electronic systems with specially adapted photosynthetic purple bacteria, whose energy production can become an integral part of the traditional electrical circuit.
Source: http://www.miami.edu/