About this Research Topic
A fundamental understanding of photosynthesis in nature is crucial for applied photosynthesis, which may well prove to play a key role in overcoming some of the greatest challenges that humankind is facing today: increasing food production, protecting biodiversity, providing energy from renewable sources, and reversing climate change. Enhancing the photosynthetic conversion efficiency is a viable, perhaps the only, pathway for further improvement in crop yield. Another avenue for applying knowledge on photosynthesis is artificial photosynthesis and emerging biomimetic and biohybrid solar energy technologies. Structural biology has been transformed by technological advances that have brought to light high-resolution structures of the most relevant photosynthetic protein complexes. However, our ability to infer the photo-physical function from the molecular structure is lagging. A complete understanding of the mechanisms and design principles of light-energy conversion requires multidisciplinary approaches - combining structural and functional data as well as theoretical description using quantum mechanics and electrodynamics.
This research topic is focused on the structure-function relationships that govern the mechanisms and dynamics of the primary processes in photosynthesis, harvesting photon energy in the light-harvesting antenna complexes of cyanobacteria, algae, and plants, and electron transport within and between photosystems I and II. A second and equally important goal is promoting the transition from fundamental understanding to knowledge-driven applications through, e.g. rational design of biomimetic systems.
We are inviting submissions of original research articles, systematic review and review articles, methods, as well as opinion and perspective articles addressing or related to:
- New structures of photosynthetic systems found in the wild or engineered
- Structural insight into the mechanisms and dynamics of the light-dependent reactions
- Mechanisms of regulation of light harvesting and photoinduced electron transport
- Methodological advances in the experimental techniques and theory of optical spectra and structure-based modeling of spectroscopy data
- Biomimetic and biohybrid structures for light energy conversion
This research topic is focused on the structure-function relationships that govern the mechanisms and dynamics of the primary processes in photosynthesis, harvesting photon energy in the light-harvesting antenna complexes of cyanobacteria, algae, and plants, and electron transport within and between photosystems I and II. A second and equally important goal is promoting the transition from fundamental understanding to knowledge-driven applications through, e.g. rational design of biomimetic systems.
We are inviting submissions of original research articles, systematic review and review articles, methods, as well as opinion and perspective articles addressing or related to:
- New structures of photosynthetic systems found in the wild or engineered
- Structural insight into the mechanisms and dynamics of the light-dependent reactions
- Mechanisms of regulation of light harvesting and photoinduced electron transport
- Methodological advances in the experimental techniques and theory of optical spectra and structure-based modeling of spectroscopy data
- Biomimetic and biohybrid structures for light energy conversion
Keywords: light energy conversion, light harvesting, photoinduced, Structure-function in photosynthesis, electron transport, photosynthetic energy, applied photosynthesis
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
