19427

When cyanobacteria and plants transfer electrons photosynthetically, light is absorbed not by their photosynthetic proteins but by chlorophylls. Some of these proteins indeed participate in electron flow, but they are not plant photoreceptors. How then, do they “retain their function” and “absorb photons” in the fabricated solar cell described?

Cleon Ross
Victor, Idaho

The materials that the scientists were referring to as proteins are actually protein complexes containing chlorophyll. When the researchers isolate the complexes, they get the associated chlorophylls .—A. Goho