Photosynthesis, generally, is the synthesis of sugar from light, carbon dioxide and water, with oxygen as a waste product.
It is arguably the most important biochemical pathway known; nearly all life depends on it.
It is an extremely complex process, comprised of many coordinated biochemical reactions.
It occurs in higher plants, algae, some bacteria, and some protists, organisms collectively referred to as photoautotrophs.
Most plants are photoautotrophs, which means that they are able to synthesize food directly from inorganic compounds using light energy - for example the sun, instead of eating other organisms or relying on nutrients derived from them.
This is distinct from chemoautotrophs that do not depend on light energy, but use energy from inorganic compounds.
Chlorophyll Chlorophyll is a green photosynthetic pigment found in plants, algae, and cyanobacteria. Chlorophyll absorbs mostly in the blue and to a lesser ... >
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Chloroplast Chloroplasts are organelles found in plant cells and eukaryotic algae that conduct photosynthesis. Chloroplasts absorb sunlight and use it in ... >
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Food chain Food chains and food webs and/or food networks describe the feeding relationships between species in a biotic community. In other words, they show ... >
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Coral bleaching Coral bleaching results when the symbiotic zooxanthellae (single-celled algae) are released from the original host coral organism due to stress. The ... >
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Organelle In cell biology, an organelle is one of several structures with specialized functions, suspended in the cytoplasm of a eukaryotic cell. Eukaryotes ... >
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Phytoplankton Phytoplankton refers to the autotrophic component of the plankton that drifts in the water column. Most phytoplankton are too small to be ... >
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Biodegradation Biodegradation is the decomposition of organic material by microorganisms. The term biodegradation is often used in relation to sewage treatment, ... >
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Protist Protists are a heterogeneous group of living things, comprising those eukaryotes that are neither animals, plants, nor fungi. They are usually ... >
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Carbon cycle The carbon cycle is the biogeochemical cycle by which carbon is exchanged between the biosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere of the Earth. ... >
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Trophic level In ecology, the trophic level is the position that an organism occupies in a food chain - what it eats, and what eats it. Wildlife biologists look at ... >
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