A New Type of Chlorophyll Discovered After 60 Years of Research
An interdisciplinary team of scientists discover a new form of Chlorophyll which could lead to new developments of new methods to produce biofuels. The team had a group of scientists
- Dr Martin Schliep and Dr Zhengli Cai (University of Sydney, Australia)
- Associate Professor Robert Willows (Macquarie University, Australia);
- Professor Brett Neilan (University of New South Wales, Australia)
- Professor Hugo Scheer (University of Munich, Germany)
These scientists have worked together and characterized the absorption properties and chemical structure of chlorophyll f, making it the fifth known type of chlorophyll molecule on Earth. Believe it or not, many scientists have been researching on this for over 60 years now.
Chlorophyll is an important green pigment found in algae which helps the algae to obtain energy from light. It was earlier believed that these pigments absorbs light more strongly in the blue portion of the electromagnetic spectrum followed by the red spectrum and so on. However, this new discovery extends that range all the way to the red end of that spectrum.
This finding could lead to the development of new methods to produce biofuels more efficiently. The efficiency of the photosynthesis is entirely dependent on the type and intensity of sunlight the algae is exposed to and this discovery could thus help us to probably use a suitable algae strain or probably engineer a strain which can accumulate lipids in its cells and produce biofuels even when its exposed to multiple types of light.
If the algae is able to make effective utilization of a wider portion of the light spectrum, than it naturally produces a lot more energy, which in turn allows it to grow faster.
There are four forms of Chlorophyll: Chlorophyll a Chlorophyll b Chlorophyll c1 Chlorophyll c2 Chlorophyll d. This newly discovered chlorophyll called Chlorophyll f utilizes lower energy than any other knows chlorophyll. This form of chlorophyll was first identified rather accidentally discovered in what is called stromatolites. Stromatolites are basically layered structures formed in shallow water by the trapping, binding of sedimentary grains by blue-green algae.
The samples used in this particular investigation were collected from the Hamelin pool, in the Shark Bay of western Australia. The research team believes that microorganisms known as filamentous cyanobacteria are responsible for the production of chlorophyll f in stromatolites.
More information: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=new-form-chlorophyll
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