REVIEW: Nano-Sized Manganese–Calcium Cluster in Photosystem II^#

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M. M. Najafpour^1,2*, M. Z. Ghobadi¹, B. Haghighi^1,2, J. J. Eaton-Rye³, T. Tomo^4,5, J.-R. Shen⁶, and S. I. Allakhverdiev^7,8*

^# This review is dedicated to the memory of Academician Alexander A. Krasnovsky, one of the great pioneering figures in the field of photosynthesis research who was the Ph.D. supervisor of one of the authors (SIA).

¹Department of Chemistry, Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences (IASBS), Zanjan, 45137-66731, Iran; fax: +98-241-415-3232; E-mail: mmnajafpour@iasbs.ac.ir

²Center of Climate Change and Global Warming, Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences (IASBS), Zanjan, 45137-66731, Iran

³Department of Biochemistry, University of Otago, P. O. Box 56, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand

⁴Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Tokyo University of Science, Kagurazaka 1-3, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 162-8601, Japan

⁵PRESTO, Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), 4-1-8 Honcho Kawaguchi, Saitama 332-0012, Japan

⁶Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology, Faculty of Science, Photosynthesis Research Center, Okayama University, Okayama, 700-8530, Japan

⁷Controlled Photobiosynthesis Laboratory, Institute of Plant Physiology, Russian Academy of Sciences, ul. Botanicheskaya 35, 127276 Moscow, Russia; fax: +7-496-7330-532; E-mail: suleyman.allakhverdiev@gmail.com

⁸Institute of Basic Biological Problems, Russian Academy of Sciences, 142290 Pushchino, Moscow Region, Russia

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

Received December 18, 2013; Revision received January 15, 2014

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Cyanobacteria, algae, and plants are the manufacturers that release O₂ via water oxidation during photosynthesis. Since fossil resources are running out, researchers are now actively trying to use the natural catalytic center of water oxidation found in the photosystem II (PS II) reaction center of oxygenic photosynthetic organisms to synthesize a biomimetic supercatalyst for water oxidation. Success in this area of research will transcend the current bottleneck for the development of energy-conversion schemes based on sunlight. In this review, we go over the structure and function of the water-oxidizing complex (WOC) found in Nature by focusing on the recent advances made by the international research community dedicated to achieve the goal of artificial water splitting based on the WOC of PS II.

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KEY WORDS: manganese, calcium, nano-sized manganese–calcium cluster, oxygen, photosynthesis, water oxidation, water-oxidizing complex

DOI: 10.1134/S0006297914040026

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