From space, Earth looks like an absolute paradise with deep ocean blues and verdant green vegetation covering every continent including Antarctica. But are we biased in thinking that any sort of ...

The story of life on Earth can’t be told without photosynthesis, the process by which plants (and some other lifeforms) convert sunlight into chemical energy. Now, a team of researchers has announced ...

Oxygenic photosynthesis relies on two large multisubunit assemblies, photosystem II (PSII) and photosystem I (PSI), embedded within the thylakoid membrane. Each photosystem comprises a reaction centre ...

Researchers at the University of Liège (ULiège) have identified microstructures in fossil cells that are 1.75 billion years old. These structures, called thylakoid membranes, are the oldest ever ...

Bacterial evolution and oxygen adaptation: A timeline built from genomic, fossil, and chemical data. Colors show oxygen states: anaerobic (blue), aerobic (red), and proportion of aerobic lineages in ...

Scientists estimate that oxygenic photosynthesis -- the ability to turn light and water into energy, releasing oxygen -- first evolved on Earth between 3.4 and 2.9 billion years ago. Some time in ...

Photosynthesis may have evolved about half a billion years before oxygen became abundant in the Earth’s atmosphere, suggests a new study (Proc. R. Soc. B 2021, 10.1098/rspb.2021.0675). This discovery ...

"Dark oxygen" is being produced deep in the ocean, and scientists are baffled by the strange phenomenon, according to a new study. In science class, kids learn that plants need sunlight to do ...

Structures inside rare bacteria are similar to those that power photosynthesis in plants today, suggesting the process is older than assumed. Structures inside rare bacteria are similar to those that ...

Plants use sunlight to convert water and carbon dioxide into energy-rich sugars and oxygen in various ways (photosynthesis).

Rodgers & Hammerstein could have been describing the Berkshires when they wrote “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over.” Without sunlight, we would have no flowers, trees, veggies, shrubs or even grass — just ...