Unlike us, plants don't need pantries full of food to stay alive; the Sun is their pantry. But, like us, they require fairly regular sustenance, which they create via photosynthesis. This seemingly ...

Trees need sunlight for the same reason you need food. The energy from the Sun’s rays is a crucial ingredient in how plants make their own food that helps them power all their cells. Since trees don’t ...

Sunlight drives nearly all life on Earth, but much remains a mystery about the light-harvesting molecules on which biology depends in photosynthesis. In a new study published online June 14 in the ...

Before I retired, I taught science to fourth graders in Midland’s GT program. As a scientist myself, I wanted my students to love science as I knew it: asking and answering questions about big ideas.

Plants and trees may seem pretty passive, but behind the scenes, their cells are working hard to put on a magic show. In this episode of Crash Course Botany, we’ll explore how the processes of ...

The energy that plants capture from sunlight through photosynthesis provides the source of nearly all of humanity's food. Yet the process of photosynthesis has inefficiencies that limit crop ...

Rodgers & Hammerstein could have been describing the Berkshires when they wrote “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over.” Without sunlight, we would have no flowers, trees, veggies, shrubs or even grass — just ...

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Photosynthesis is the process whereby plants turn sunlight into the energy (sugars) that they need to survive and grow. For most plants, this happens in the leaves, which contain chlorophyll; a green ...

The RuBisCO enzyme, the most abundant protein on the planet, is an essential component of photosynthesis, but it isn’t terribly efficient, especially when it gets hot. Over time, some plants evolved a ...