Profound Plant Partnership
stock.xchng/Bessarro Most plants need sunlight in order to live. Red and blue are preferable. Bacteria on plant leaves need sunlight as well. Green light. They use use the green light that plants do not want. And bacteria absorb the most light at the same point that plants absorb no light; a win-win situation, not a "struggle for survival". Sorry, Papa Darwin, this is evidence for a Designer, not for evolution. Plant leaves convert light into chemical energy for use in cells. Their biochemistry specifically absorbs the blue and red areas of the visible light spectrum. Now researchers have discovered that light-harvesting bacteria living on the surfaces of leaves gather energy from the green part of the spectrum, meaning that they cooperate rather than compete with plants. How did this perfectly balanced energy-sharing system come about? Knowing that light-harvesting microbes live in aquatic environments, the researchers tested the hypothesis that similar bacteria live