Structure
Chloroplasts
Capture light energy to make sugar by photosynthesis.
Photosynthesis
Using light energy to turn carbon dioxide and water into sugar, releasing oxygen.Source: OpenStax, 2018Source: Bassham et al., 1950
Also called Calvin cycle.
Process
How Photosynthesis connects
Photosynthesis happens in
Photosynthesis involves
Photosynthesis uses
Molecule
Rubisco
The enzyme that captures carbon dioxide in photosynthesis, often called the most abundant protein on Earth.
Photosynthesis includes the example
Process
C4 photosynthesis
A carbon-concentrating form of photosynthesis that evolved many separate times, in plants such as maize.
Photosynthesis makes possible
Process
Primary production
Carbon fixed by plants, algae and photosynthetic microbes: about 105 billion tonnes a year worldwide, roughly half on land and half in the ocean.
Photosynthesis is involved in
Process
Carbon cycle
The movement of carbon among the air, oceans, living things, soils and rocks.
Photosynthesis is used by
Organism or group
Phytoplankton
Microscopic photosynthetic organisms drifting in sunlit water. Ocean producers account for roughly half of the carbon fixed on Earth each year.
Photosynthesis is related to
Structure
Xylem and phloem
Xylem carries water up from the roots; phloem carries sugars from leaves to where they are used or stored.
Studied in
Your progress
Sources & further reading
The explanations on this page are our own summaries of these sources. Follow a link to read the original; if anything here disagrees with it, the original wins. How we choose and check sources.
Biology 2e (opens the original in a new tab)
OpenStax (2018). OpenStax, Rice University.
Free introductory college textbook.
TextbookEducationalLicence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (linked, not reused)
The path of carbon in photosynthesis (opens the original in a new tab)
Bassham JA, Benson AA, Calvin M (1950). Journal of Biological Chemistry 185:781-787.
Historical paperPrimary research