BIOL1040 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Light-Independent Reactions, Chlorophyll, C3 Carbon Fixation
Document Summary
Autotrophs: autotrophs are organisms that do not rely on consuming other living organisms for energy, they synthesise energy using sunlight, examples of autotrophs are plants, algae, protists, some prokaryotes. Heterotrophs: are dependent on other organisms and plants for energy cannot synthesise their own, examples are humans and animals. Photosynthesis: photosynthesis is the mechanism by which light energy is converted into chemical energy, sunlight is used to synthesise organic molecules from water and carbon dioxide, organic refers to carbon structures such as sugars. In leaves, they take place in organelles called chloroplasts: chloroplasts contain stacked structures called thylakoids, thylakoid membrane is impermeable to everything. Nothing can diffuse through it: the stacked thylakoids are collectively called grana, chloroplasts are also filled with fluid called stroma (like the cytoplasm in animal cells) Photosynthesis in a nutshell: h2o (input) o2 (output, co2 (input) ch2o sugar (output) It is called dark reactions because it does not use light energy.
