Photosynthesis and Cloning in Cyanobacteria

Abstract

Research into photosynthesis is now a century old. Progress in the understanding of this mechanism has been slow, primarily for two reasons. First, the process is highly complex and involves dozens of components which must be arranged in a precise, orderly and structured fashion. Secondly, the so-called light-reactions of photosynthesis with which we will be concerned are located within a membrane. Unfortunately, techniques for the study of membrane-localized structures have lagged behind other fields and have only come into their own during the past 10 years. Another feature that has tended to impede progress in photosynthetic research concerns the wide range of organisms that can be utilized for such studies. Thus, researchers have worked with plants, eukaryotic algae, photosynthetic bacteria, and the cyanobacteria (blue-green algae); specific organisms were seen as possessing certain important characteristics and were used only during specific experiments. Though the cyanobacteria have often been utilized as an organism in photosynthetic research, the range of experiments have been somewhat narrow. These include an assessment of the phycobiliproteins in light-harvesting as well as comparative biochemical studies.