Special Issue: Photo-Induced Processes in Photosynthesis – From Femtoseconds to Seconds

Photosynthesis nourishes nearly all life on Earth. Therefore, a deeper understanding of the processes by which sunlight is converted into stored chemical energy presents an important and continuing challenge for fundamental scientific research. The explosive global demand for sustainable energy, the increasing climate change uncertainty, and waning worldwide food and water security have increased the practical value and urgency of research in this area. Much of the basic science concerning light harvesting, energy transfer, and subsequent charge separation in reaction centers is now generally considered to be well understood. However, important questions and controversies remain such as the relevance of quantum coherence and other non-classical effects in photosynthetic processes and the role of protein dynamics in governing the energetics, kinetics, and directionality of these processes.

The aim of this Special Issue is to survey current research on the dynamical aspects of the initial steps of photosynthesis, including excitation energy transfer, electron transport, and dissipation of energy across time domains from femtoseconds to seconds.

This collection is also dedicated to Prof. Valdimir A. Shuvalov, who passed away unexpectedly on January 8, 2022. Prof. Shuvalov will be remembered for his many pioneering contributions in ultrafast spectroscopy of photosynthetic reaction centers. He was a friend and collaborator with many readers of Photosynthesis Research.

Academician Vladimir Anatolevich Shuvalov, one of the world's leading investigators of photosynthesis passed away on January 8, 2022. He made numerous fundamental discoveries on the primary steps of photosynthesis in reaction centers of photosynthetic bacteria as well as in photosystems I and II of plants. Following his graduate studies with Academician A.A. Krasnovsky, Prof. Shuvalov spent several years in the USA with William Parson and Bacon Ke (1979-1981). From 1996 to 2017, he was the director of the Russian Academy of Science (RAS) Institute of Photosynthesis (now the Institute of Fundamental Problems of Biology) in Pushchino. He combined leadership of the Institute with educational activities, being the organizing director of the photosynthesis branch at the Lomonosov Moscow State University in Pushchino and the organizer and long-term head of the Department of Photobiophysics of the A.N. Belozersky Research Institute of Physical and Chemical Biology at Moscow State University. In recent years he worked actively in the RAS N.N. Semenov Federal Research Center for Chemical Physics. In 1999, he was elected Chairman of the Presidium of the Pushchino Scientific Center of the RAS, which he continued to lead until 2006. He was a member of the Presidium of the RAS, Deputy Chairman of the Scientific Council of the RAS on Plant Physiology and Photosynthesis, co-chairman of the Council of the Russian Photobiological Society, and a member of the Presidium of the Pushchino Scientific Center of the RAS. Many credit him with creating the Russian scientific school for the study of ultrafast processes of electron transfer in photosynthetic reaction centers, following the traditions of the Russian scientific school founded by academicians A.N. Terenin and A.A. Krasnovsky. As the author of over 250 published works, including 2 monographs, Prof. Shuvalov is one of the 300 most cited scientists in Russia. Ten candidate and two doctoral dissertations were defended under his guidance.