Metabolic exaptation of an anaplerotic nitrogen cycle between bundle sheath and mesophyll cells may explain the remarkably frequent convergent evolution of C4 photosynthesis.

Tobacco plants containing xanthophyll astaxanthin show that both photosystems are fully functional in the absence of carotenes, and these pigments are not essential for photosynthesis.

Slug chloroplasts avoid damage to photosynthesis by maintaining an oxidized electron transfer chain with the help of oxygen-sensitive electron acceptors.

Melainabacteria, a candidate phylum related to Cyanobacteria, has been identified in gut and sediment samples by genomic analysis.

Computational modelling indicates that C₄ photosynthesis in distantly related plant species arose through a number of independent evolutionary paths.

Constraint-based modelling predicts C4 photosynthesis evolves under resource limitation from an ancestral ground state of C3 photosynthesis and attributes divergent metabolic routes in extant C4 subtypes to light.

Storage of solar energy in the thylakoid electrical field by photosynthesis in vivo can substantially destabilize charge-separated states in photosystem II, leading to singlet oxygen production and photodamage, contributing to loss of productivity, especially under fluctuating light experienced in the field.

Guanosine tetraphosphate (ppGpp) is a pivotal regulator of chloroplast activity that is required for acclimation to nitrogen limitation in the model plant Arabidopsis.

The algal pyrenoid is formed at high O₂ levels, even when CO₂ is high, implying that a product of photosynthesis, most likely H₂O₂ acts as a signal.

The overall energy conversion efficiency is calculated for a bacterial vesicle that harvests solar energy for ATP production on the basis of an atomic-detail structural model.