Efficient through diversity

The wide diversity of molecules that let light through does not mean that one form of the light harvesting system is more efficient than another, however. According to Professor of Mass Spectrometry Albert Heck, Tamara’s PhD supervisor: “I think that the diversity of gamma building blocks is what makes the system work optimally under all circumstances. It can constantly adapt, so it is much more refined than we earlier thought.”

New generation of solar panels

Heck hopes that today’s solar panels, which have a yield of 20 percent at most, may eventually be improved with help from the same system that algae use. “The ingenious control panel that algae use to convert sunlight into usable energy is more complicated than a Swiss watch. This is the product of three billion years of evolution, and engineers could learn a lot from it. A primal organism that gives us the blueprint for the ultimate super-efficient solar cells.”

Publication

A Colorful Pallet of B-phycoerythrin Proteoforms Exposed by a Multimodal Mass Spectrometry Approach

Sem Tamara*, Max Hoek*, Richard A. Scheltema*, Aneika C. Leney and Albert J.R. Heck*

CellChem, 9 May 2019

* Affiliated with Utrecht University