Photosynthetic Bacteria Group, Biology Department, Indiana University, 47405, Bloomington, IN, U.S.A..
Photosynth Res. 1988 Oct;19(3):287-308. doi: 10.1007/BF00046880.
Discovery of the general outlines of plant and bacterial photosyntheses required the efforts of a large number of gifted scientists over the course of two centuries. The first to suggest that sunlight might affect plants in some way other than through conversion of light to heat was Stephen Hales, in 1725, and this notion was promptly satirized by Jonathan Swift in his description of the "cucumber project" inGulliver's Travels (1726). Considerably later, in 1772, Joseph Priestley reported the first experiments showing the production of "dephlogisticated air" (oxygen gas) by plants, and the interdependence of animal and plant life mediated by gases. Priestley and others, however, had difficulty repeating these experiments, mainly because they were unaware of the requirement for light in photosynthesis. The latter was clearly demonstrated in 1779 by Jan Ingen-Housz, who also determined that leaves were the primary sites of the photosynthetic production of oxygen by plants. When purple bacteria were first studied in the late 19th century by Theodor Engelmann, light-dependent O2 formation could not be detected. Contradictory observations in this connection were reported for a number of decades, but eventually the absence of O2 production in photosynthesis by purple bacteria was conclusively established. Attempts to explain why the bacteria do not evolve O2 led Cornelis van Niel to propose a "unified, comparative biochemical" explanation of photosynthetic processes that was widely accepted. This hypothesis, however, was abandoned soon after photophosphorylation by membranes from purple bacteria and plant chloroplasts was discovered in 1954. Unexpectedly, rapid progress in molecular biological and genetic studies of the membrane-bound reaction centers of purple bacteria indicate that current investigations are on the verge of revealing the detailed mechanisms by which energy conversion occurs in the reaction centers of all photosynthetic organisms.
植物和细菌光合作用的大致原理的发现需要两个多世纪以来大量有天赋的科学家的努力。第一个提出阳光可能以某种方式影响植物，而不是通过将光转化为热的人是斯蒂芬·黑尔斯（Stephen Hales），他在 1725 年提出了这一观点，而乔纳森·斯威夫特（Jonathan Swift）在他的《格列佛游记》（Gulliver's Travels）中对“黄瓜项目”的描述中立即对这一观点进行了讽刺（1726 年）。后来，在 1772 年，约瑟夫·普里斯特利（Joseph Priestley）报告了第一个实验，证明植物产生了“去酸空气”（氧气），并且动物和植物生命通过气体相互依存。然而，普里斯特利（Priestley）和其他人难以重复这些实验，主要是因为他们不知道光合作用需要光。1779 年，扬·英根豪斯（Jan Ingen-Housz）清楚地证明了这一点，他还确定叶子是植物光合作用产生氧气的主要场所。当 19 世纪后期首次研究紫色细菌时，西奥多·恩格尔曼（Theodor Engelmann）无法检测到光依赖性 O2 的形成。在这方面，报告了数十年来相互矛盾的观察结果，但最终确凿地证明了紫色细菌光合作用中没有 O2 的产生。解释为什么细菌不会产生 O2 的尝试导致科内利斯·范尼尔（Cornelis van Niel）提出了一种被广泛接受的“统一的、比较的生物化学”光合作用解释。然而，这个假设很快就被放弃了，因为 1954 年发现了紫色细菌和植物叶绿体的膜光合作用磷酸化。出乎意料的是，对紫色细菌膜结合反应中心的分子生物学和遗传研究的快速进展表明，目前的研究即将揭示所有光合作用生物的反应中心中能量转换发生的详细机制。
