Photosynthesis in silico. Understanding complexity from molecules to ecosystems
Abstract
Understanding photosynthetic complexity is a big task, especially when the range is from molecules to ecosystems and the means of advancing it is in the form of mathematical analyses, including simulation models and flux-control analysis. However, this collection of review chapters achieves its aims extremely well, helping to summarize and collate the literature, thus smoothing the path to enlightenment. Biology, and the process of photosynthesis as a central part of it, is characterized by complexity. That has long been evident and is more apparent now than ever. Over the last century and with increasing speed, the physical and molecular bases of energy transduction by the photosynthetic light reactions and their role in production of NADPH and of ATP have been clarified. The nature of carbon dioxide assimilation in the C3 form and the C4 and CAM variants have been largely explained, including how they are driven by the energy transduction processes. These have been integrated into a detailed understanding of the physiological processes of CO2 assimilation of cells and leaves. This has informed and advanced analysis of larger-scale ecological processes, such as biomass production of different types of vegetation, even those on a geological scale. Understanding of plant biology is centred on photosynthesis. The key to this rapid progress has been analysis of events at different scales of complexity in space and time. Very early appreciation of CO2 assimilation by whole…
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