How to Use photosystem in a Sentence

photosystem

noun
  • More examples could also help address the mystery of which photosystem evolved first.
    — Quanta Magazine, 10 June 2026
  • Over billions of years, the reaction centers of the two photosystems have remained remarkably unchanged.
    — Quanta Magazine, 10 June 2026
  • Mostly depleted, the electrons then reach photosystem I, where another burst of sunshine kicks the flow back into high gear.
    — Quanta Magazine, 10 June 2026
  • Instead, its photosystems stud the cell’s external plasma membrane rather than the thylakoid membrane found in plants and modern cyanobacteria.
    — Quanta Magazine, 10 June 2026
  • Then, as in a game of hot potato, chlorophyll and other pigment molecules funnel this excess energy to the reaction center of the photosystem.
    — Quanta Magazine, 10 June 2026
  • However, the photosystem I architecture of the Gloeobacteria has changed little over all that time.
    — Quanta Magazine, 10 June 2026
  • Over evolutionary time, this theory goes, one of those copies mutated and evolved to give rise to a second photosystem that uses oxygen to harvest energy more efficiently.
    — Quanta Magazine, 10 June 2026
  • The gene duplication event that doubled the photosystems, allowing one copy to evolve a novel process, happened so long ago that any evidence of that first photosystem has been buried by extinction and billions of years of change.
    — Quanta Magazine, 10 June 2026
  • Many researchers therefore hypothesize that anoxygenic photosynthesis and its photosystem evolved first.
    — Quanta Magazine, 10 June 2026
  • For example, some bacteria use only photosystem I and avoid oxygen altogether in a form of anoxygenic photosynthesis.
    — Quanta Magazine, 10 June 2026
  • The reaction center at the heart of the photosystem, where chlorophyll pigments absorb photons and produce sugar from carbon dioxide, showed only a few small changes when compared to the photosystems of other Gloeobacteria.
    — Quanta Magazine, 10 June 2026
  • These results, published in May 2025 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that the forces of natural selection have made limited changes to the photosystem’s core, but that other aspects of the photosynthetic machinery have proved more malleable.
    — Quanta Magazine, 10 June 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'photosystem.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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