© Science Photo Library/Dr Jeremy Burgess
Plants convert light into energy through photosynthesis. Researchers want to imitate this – and even outperform nature in terms of efficiency. That would be the basis for a radically new way of obtaining food and natural resources.
Evolution has achieved a masterpiece in plants: over billions of years, organisms developed a sustainable way of generating energy based on the process of photosynthesis: sunlight, carbon dioxide and water are converted into carbohydrates, while oxygen is produced and released at the same time. It is a natural success story. But botanists and chemists see
