Bacterial photosynthesis

Although the process of photosynthesis is most commonly associated with plants and algae, much of our understanding of the molecular basis for light energy capture and photochemical energy transduction has come from studies of photosynthetic bacteria. Space precludes a detailed description of the different types of photosynthetic bacteria, and so this article will focus in the main on the most heavily studied group of anoxygenic phototrophs, with only brief mention of their less well-known cousins. The cyanobacteria, which carry out a process of oxygenic photosynthesis common to that found in green plants and algae, are not covered in this article. Even with a limited focus the subject of bacterial photosynthesis is vast, and so the following description is necessarily selective, focusing on the most heavily-studied systems and key issues, and inevitably reflecting the author's personal bias. Accordingly, the bibliography at the end of the article includes some general works that provide more detailed and comprehensive information, and in some instances, in-the-text citations are to recent review articles rather than original research papers. Regarding general works, in particular, the reader is guided to a book by Blankenship (2002), which provides a detailed and accessible account of the light reactions of photosynthesis, and the underlying physical chemistry, and also to a recent book edited by Hunter et al. titled "The Purple Photosynthetic Bacteria" (2008), which contains authoritative reviews on many of the aspects of bacterial photosynthesis outlined below