Avi Blizovsky
https://www.hayadan.org.il/technion260705.html
The Technion researchers, who headed a multinational team of scientists from Austria, Korea, the USA and the Hebrew University, discovered proteins (proteorhodopsins) that harvest light energy in the upper layers of water in the Mediterranean and Red Seas. This is the first time that this mechanism, which contributes such a large amount of energy, has been quantified. The prestigious scientific journal reports on this discovery
PLoS Biology in its cover story.
Professor Oded Beja and his intern, Jazala Sabihi from the Faculty of Biology, explained that the bacteria harvest light energy and turn it into chemical energy. In an effort to characterize bacteria that use this light-harvesting mechanism, the researchers analyzed "chromosome libraries" of bacteria that cannot be grown in the laboratory from the Mediterranean and Red Seas. 55 such "clones" were discovered to carry different and varied proteorhodopsin genes, and in five of them the biophysical mechanism in which they work was also deciphered.
"We discovered that bacteria that use proteorhodopsins make up 13% of the microorganisms in the light layer (the top layer in seawater, the one that penetrates the light)," said Professor Beja. "We were also able to show that in some bacteria that contain proteorhodopsin there is a biosynthetic pathway for the production of retinal molecules (vitamin A) that is essential for the activity of these proteins. In addition, it was found that some of them contain gene clusters of reverse sulfite reductase. This mechanism probably allows these bacteria to also extract energy from sulfur-rich compounds found in the sea. Therefore, these new phototrophic proteins constitute a diverse and significant component, quantitatively, in the living world in the upper layer of sea water. The mechanism we are working on, among other things, is a new mechanism for harvesting light energy and is different from the mechanism that plants and algae use (photosynthesis)."
Idan evolution - the marine environment
https://www.hayadan.org.il/BuildaGate4/general2/data_card.php?Cat=~~~221498389~~~198&SiteName=hayadan
