Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
intricate food webs, providing energy for the primary and secondary consumers.
Therefore, they are important contributors for the production of the human staple
diet in the form of crustaceans, fish, and mammals derived from the sea (Häder
et al. 2007 ). (xi) Cyanobacteria (e.g., mostly Anabaena and Nostoc spp.) that grow
through photosynthesis are a rich source of potentially useful marine natural prod-
ucts (secondary metabolites) that have specific activities such as anti-HIV, antican-
cer, antifungal, antimalarial, antifoulants, anti-inflammatory, antituberculosis, and
antimicrobial (Moore 1996 ; Burja et al. 2001 ; Singh et al. 2002 ; Blunt et al. 2007 ).
For example cyanovirin (CV-N, cyanovirin-N), a 101 amino acid protein extracted
from Nostoc ellipsosporum has potent activity against a wide range of immunode-
ficiency viruses such as HIV-1, M-and T-tropic stains of HIV-1, HIV-2, SIV (sim-
ian) and FIV (feline) (Burja et al. 2001 ). (x) Marine microorganisms could be used
as sources of natural bioactive molecules that play a photoprotective role, which
could be used in commercial applications (Rastogi et al. 2010 ). A number of pho-
toprotective compounds such as melanins, mycosporines, mycosporine-like amino
acids (MAAs), scytonemin, parietin, usnic acid, carotenoids, phycobiliproteins,
phenylpropanoids and flavonoids and several other UV-absorbing substances of
unknown chemical structure are produced by different microorganisms (Rastogi
et al. 2010 ; Blunt et al. 2007 ; Jeffrey et al. 1999 ; Gauslaa and McEvoy 2005 ; Sinha
et al. 2007 b; Coesel et al. 2008 ; Klisch and Häder 2008 ; Hylander et al. 2009 ; Lee
and Shiu 2009 ; Ingalls et al. 2010 ).
3 New Hypothesis for Photosynthesis Using H 2 O 2
Instead of H 2 O
Studies demonstrate that the reaction of CO 2 and H 2 O 2 (instead of H 2 O) can
cause photosynthesis of organisms in photosynthetic cell in new hypothesis
(Komissarov 1994 , 1995 , 2003 ; Velthuys and Kok 1978 ; Mano et al. 1987 ; Renger
1987 ; Anan'ev and Klimov 1988 ; Bader and Schmid 1988 , 1989 ; Schroeder 1989 ;
Schröder and Åkerlund 1990 ; Miyake and Asada 1992 ; Bader 1994 ; Mostofa
et al. 2009 ; Kuznetsov et al. 2010 ; Bernardini et al. 2011 ; Mostofa et al. 2009 ).
According to these studies, the reaction of CO 2 and H 2 O 2 (instead of H 2 O) can
cause photosynthesis of organisms by either simultaneous photoinduced formation
of H 2 O 2 in chlorophylls bound in photosynthetic cell or photoinduced and micro-
bial formation of H 2 O 2 and CO 2 from dissolved organic matter (DOM) and par-
ticulate organic matter (POM) in aqueous media.
The general photosynthetic reaction can be expressed as follows (Eqs. 3.1 , 3.2 ):
H ν
−→ C X ( H 2 O ) Y + O 2 + E (±)
X CO 2 ( H 2 O ) + Y H 2 O 2 ( H 2 O )
(3.1)
2H 2 O 2 + photoinduced / biological processes O 2 + 2H 2 O / unknown oxidants
(3.2)
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