Issues

Phototrophs in the Blastochloris genus, known for growth using extremely long wavelength light in the near-infrared, assemble their photosystems with an additional subunit (yellow). The paper by Namoon and colleagues demonstrates that this subunit was recruited to shift the absorbance of the pigment–protein complex from a region of the spectrum where light doesn’t reach the surface of Earth, to longer wavelengths where photons are of even lower energy but are more abundant. Read more from Canniffe and colleagues in The role of the γ subunit in the photosystem of the lowest-energy phototrophs on pp 2449-2463.