Scientists Image Atom Just as It Photosynthesizes

upstart writes:

Paper details previously unknown step in process of converting light energy to chemical energy:

Photosynthesis - the process by which plants and some other organisms convert sunlight to food - is complex, and scientists don't fully understand how it works. But a team of researchers led by the US Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory reckon they're closer to solving the mystery - they captured an image of the atoms inside cyanobacteria undergoing photosynthesis just as the tiny organism released oxygen.

X-ray lasers at SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source at Stanford University, and the SPring-8 Angstrom Compact free electron LAser (SACLA) at a synchrotron radiation facility in Japan's SPring-8 lab, were directed at a specific protein used to catalyze the chemical reaction. The protein complex, dubbed Photosystem II, is used by organisms like cyanobacteria or algae to photosynthesize.

Photosystem II carries a molecule, made up of four manganese (Mn) atoms and one calcium (Ca) atom connected by oxygen atoms, and splits a water molecule apart to release oxygen. The research team managed to image the different steps in the reaction, and discovered a previously unknown step in the process.

[...] Tens or even hundreds of thousands of these snapshots are required to see how the atoms move over time. Capturing them is a tedious process that constantly requires fresh cyanobacteria samples, since each one gets destroyed after being exposed to the powerful X-ray pulse. The experimental setup to facilitate the research took six years to build, as the authors explained in a study published by Nature on Wednesday.

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