Models of Photosynthetic Electron Transport

Abstract

Energy transduction reactions in the photosynthetic membrane are a primary step in storing solar energy to be used later in biosynthetic and other processes in living systems. This review summarizes the recent data on modeling photosynthetic electron transport that were obtained at the Department of Biology, Moscow State University. Mathematical models of various types were used to simulate the processes that occur at the levels of macromolecules, their complexes, and molecular ensembles and at the subcellular and cell levels. Detailed kinetic models act by fitting model curves to experimental data and make it possible to estimate the contributions of individual processes to the observed processes and to identify the system parameters. The Monte Carlo method helps to simulate the processes that occur in ensembles of several millions of photosynthetic chains. Brownian and molecular dynamics were used to study the formation of electron-transport protein–protein complexes. A combination of the above methods provides the ability to study the basic mechanisms of energy conversion in multiscale energy-converting systems, such as the system of primary photosynthetic processes.