Wick scientist talks of plant hack that could revolutionise renewable energy generation
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A former Wick High School pupil has authored a university research paper detailing how living plant cells could be utilised to provide clean fuel and renewable energy.
Having attained his PhD in November last year from the University of Cambridge, Tomi Baikie was sitting in a pub with a fellow researcher, Dr Laura Wey, when he came up with the idea of using lasers to look into plant cells.
"We didn’t think it would work," said Tomi. "Surprisingly, our crazy idea worked quite well. I carried out the laser spectroscopy, [shining] beams of light that are a million billion times faster than the flash on your phone. We managed to make it work within a living cell. Using that information we were able to watch how photosynthesis works in a live cell [and] managed to extract electrons from the cell.
"This means we can make cells/plants work as solar cells – and extract the electrons at the best possible point."
Tomi is a research fellow at the Physics department of the University of Cambridge and director of studies in physics. He is the first author, along with Dr Wey, of the recently completed paper which was led by the University of Cambridge and involved an international team of physicists, chemists and biologists. The researchers were able to ‘hack’ the earliest stages of photosynthesis, the natural machine that powers the vast majority of life on Earth, and discovered new ways to extract energy from the process – a finding that could lead to new ways of generating clean fuel and renewable energy.
Despite the fact that it is one of the most well-known and well-studied processes on Earth, the researchers found that photosynthesis still has secrets to tell. Using ultrafast spectroscopic techniques to study the movement of energy, the researchers found the chemicals that can extract electrons from the molecular structures responsible for photosynthesis do so at the initial stages, rather than much later, as was previously thought. This ‘rewiring’ of photosynthesis could improve ways in which it deals with excess energy, and create new and more efficient ways of using its power. The results are reported in the journal Nature.
Tomi said: "The physics of photosynthesis is seriously impressive. Normally, we work on highly ordered materials, but observing charge transport through cells opens up remarkable opportunities for new discoveries on how nature operates.
Contrary to their expectations, Tomi said that he and Dr Wey were surprised that the experiment worked as well as it did and it means they now have a "new tool to understand cells".
"By using this new set up – on live cells – we eventually managed to work out we could extract electrons at the best possible point in photosynthesis. This could be useful for making plant based solar cells, catalysis or even taking carbon from the atmosphere – all pressing challenges.
"Most importantly, the quantum electronics of the plant world is pretty spectacular and could be used to inspire new more efficient devices – such as displays, and solar cells."
“Since the electrons from photosynthesis are dispersed through the whole system, that means we can access them,” said Dr Wey, who did the work in the Department of Biochemistry, and is now based at the University of Turku, Finland. “The fact that we didn’t know this pathway existed is exciting, because we could be able to harness it to extract more energy for renewables.”
The researchers say that being able to extract charges at an earlier point in the process of photosynthesis, could make the process more efficient when manipulating photosynthetic pathways to generate clean fuels from the Sun. In addition, the ability to regulate photosynthesis could mean that crops could be made more able to tolerate intense sunlight.
