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MEDIA: How Does Life Happen When There’s Barely Any Light?
07 February 2025
‘Under the sea ice during the Arctic’s pitch-black polar night, cells power photosynthesis on the lowest light levels ever observed in nature’. Professor Kevin Flynn, Plankton ecophysiology modeller at PML, has featured in Quanta Magazine in the article, ‘How Does Life Happen When There’s Barely Any Light?’.
‘Most of life’s engines run on sunlight. Photons filter down through the atmosphere and are eagerly absorbed by light-powered organisms such as plants and algae. Through photosynthesis, the particles of light power a cellular reaction that manufactures chemical energy (in the form of sugars), which is then passed around the food web in a complex dance of herbivores, predators, scavengers, decomposers and more.
On a bright, sunny day, there’s a wealth of photons to go around. But what happens at low light? Biologists have long been curious about just how little light photosynthesis can run on — or how many photons need to arrive, and how quickly, for a cell’s photosynthetic machinery to process carbon dioxide into oxygen and energy…’