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Co-Evolution

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Welwordion:
As soon as chlorophyll(green) bacteria or bacteria eating bacteria take the advantage there would have been evolutionary pressure on the retinal(purple)
What I read out of the article  you linked to is that chlorophyll is either more energy efficient or or the retinal did have more colloteral damage involved in its energy extraction process, nothing of stoping evolution.
Of course in multicellular organism gene migration etc is far more difficult those things rather work in single cellular organims and as we can see not all single cell organsims use photosynthesis, cause not everywhere is light to be of worth for that, but multicellular organsims can either make use of plant chlorphyll or becone symbiotic with bacteria able to do photosysnthesis
and like I said the fact that we have not more species doing it is a sign its inefficient without the cost of some design alterations.
Also do not forget that only outer, surface cells are limited to do photosynthesis which reduces the energy gain per organsim quite a lot. Also do not underestimate  how much energy moving consumes.

Peter:
I haven't look far into it. So maybe that retinal does absorb light better. I haven't checked it, it could be. After all no plant is black, so they're losing light all the time. Yellow light is a kinda small part of the spectrum, so I doubt sincerely if that is where they win it, if I look at the graph of the link it look like it is green light where they win.

Still that name retinal, it sounds familiair.
Ah, found it. It is a form of vitamin A. Who said we can't compete with plants, huh. We're already having the 'plant-beating' (retinal) ourself.

Anyway, it isn't the most formed type of vitamin A, that is the alcohol retinol. But it is there and crucial.

Numsgil:
Keep in mind that red light is low energy.  Blue and violet light is high energy.  For photosynthesis to work, it involves a metal atom and the photoelectric effect, so it needs very specific wavelengths of light.  Also, there are two different pigments involved in photosynthesis, and they absorb slightly different colors.  The net effect is that plants absorb red light and blue light, but ignore the middle energy green light in the middle of the spectrum.

Check out this.

Peter:
Yes, correct numsgil.

I was just pointing out that any plant hasn't got 100% effienciency. Primary becouse it isn't black it doesn't absorb everything meaning any plant is wastefull.

Also there seems to be 5 different types, explained in the wiki-site you linked to. The other three are only used in one-cell organisms.

I've got to say this retinal and the chloroplasts fitt each other. If this site is correct why aren't there any retinal-plants. They seem to live from the green light, what the normal plants don't absorb.

bacillus:
Also, this is ignoring oddities, such as red-leaved plants which, presumably, only use high-energy spectra for photosynthesis.

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