Personal Narrative: The Plant Way Of Life

The plant way of life is an incredible phenomena that is poetic at the very least and demands the imagination of the curious! The plant way of life maybe thought to begin at the seed or spore, but I think that the origins of the story can be traced further back. That is part of the beauty of this ancient epic: its origins are deeper than initially expected. In fact, it would seem that the plant way of life finds its ‘roots’ in the fusion of hydrogen molecules within the sun. Ninety million miles away, molecules of hydrogen are being manipulated by gravity and other forces to become helium atoms. The fusion releases an enormous amount of energy as radiation outwards into the space. The radiation is then free to begin its long trek across open

Specifically, compartmentalization of the photosynthetic machinery in the chloroplast thylakoid has allowed the photosynthetic process the ability to effectively turn radiation into energetically useful biomolecules. The thylakoid membrane holds the proteins along the surface area of the thylakoid. Without the thylakoid membrane, the photosynthetic machinery would be free-floating in the cells cytoplasm. It would then just be up to chance for one of the photosynthetic proteins to bump into another and pass on its electron. By being held in place by the membrane, there is a decrease in the potential distance between two of the proteins. However, that is not the only photosynthetically useful function of the thylakoid membrane. It actually allows for there to be a compartmentalization and gradient of protons. Without this barrier, the protons driven by the passage of electrons would be free to flow in and out of the thylakoid. The thylakoid membrane poses an obstacle which does not allow for unguided proton passage. Rather, the protons are forced to traverse the length of another protein, which drives an unfavorable synthesis of an energetic