Light Shows in Nature Reflect the Wisdom of the Light-Giver

July 4th in America is celebrated with lights.
Here are some celebrations of light within nature.

Photosynthesis

Chemists discover why photosynthetic light-harvesting is so efficient (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 3 July 2023). There can be a method in madness, and the story shows order in disorder. MIT scientists wondered how light harvesting in plants is so perfect: so 100% efficient. In their experiments with purple algae, they found that so-called “disordered” regions of proteins involved in transferring electrons from the light-harvesting “antennae” to the photocenter fine-tune the energy transfer for zero loss.

This transfer of energy through the light-harvesting complex occurs with extremely high efficiency: Nearly every photon of light absorbed generates an electron, a phenomenon known as near-unity quantum efficiency.

A new study from MIT chemists offers a potential explanation for how proteins of the light-harvesting complex, also called the antenna, achieve that high efficiency. For the first time, the researchers were able to measure the energy transfer between light-harvesting proteins, allowing them to discover that the disorganized arrangement of these proteins boosts the efficiency of the energy transduction.

“In order for that antenna to work, you need long-distance energy transduction. Our key finding is that the disordered organization of the light-harvesting proteins enhances the efficiency of that long-distance energy transduction,” says Gabriela Schlau-Cohen, an associate professor of chemistry at MIT and the senior author of the new study.

These transfers are measured in picoseconds—trillionths of a second! It’s astonishing the scientists could even measure such things. The article tells how they did it.

Sadly, the team ventured off into storybook land after observing this incredibly efficient design. How did photosynthetic cells achieved 100% efficiency at high speed? It must have evolved!

“Ordered organization is actually less efficient than the disordered organization of biology, which we think is really interesting because biology tends to be disordered. This finding tells us that that may not just be an inevitable downside of biology, but organisms may have evolved to take advantage of it,” Schlau-Cohen says.

Oh please. Don’t spoil the celebration.

Cephalopods

Cuttlefish camouflage: more than meets the eye (Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, 28 June 2023). Here’s another article on the meme of “more complex than thought.” The light shows of color put on by cuttlefish have long dazzled marine biologists, who call them “masters of disguise.” Now, Japanese scientists are even more amazed at their ability to quick-change patterns and colors on their skin.

Now, in a study published 28 June in Nature, researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) and the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research have shown that the way cuttlefish generate their camouflage pattern is much more complex than previously believed. 

Cuttlefish create their dazzling skin patterns by precisely controlling millions of tiny skin pigment cells, called chromatophores. Each chromatophore is surrounded by a set of muscles, which contract and relax under direct control of neurons in the brain. When the muscles contract, the pigment cell is expanded and when they relax, the pigment cell is hidden. Together, the chromatophores act like cellular pixels to generate the overall skin pattern. 

Pixels? It sounds like TV. High-resolution images and computer models allowed the OIST team to analyze what goes on. A video in the article shows the cuttlefish skin responding rapidly to different patterned backgrounds. The researchers found that these animals can even superimpose one pattern on another.

Squid-inspired soft material is a switchable shield for light, heat, microwaves (American Chemical Society, 28 June 2023). Speaking of cephalopods (octopuses, cuttlefish and squid), another member joins the biomimetics project. By imitating squid skin, scientists created a light bandpass filter.

Unique to the skin of squid and other cephalopods, iridocytes and chromatophores reversibly change their orientation and alter the animals’ appearance. Similarly, scientists have developed artificial materials that transition from reflecting to transmitting visible and infrared wavelengths by shifting from wrinkly to cracked. Because microwaves are much larger than these surface structures, they aren’t impacted. However, researchers recently found that dense networks of electrically conductive materials, such as silver nanowires, could block microwaves. So, Yi Yang, Guangbin Ji, Zhichuan J. Xu and colleagues wanted to integrate surface structures with a conductive network in a soft film that could quickly transition between shielding visible-to-microwave bands and allowing them through.

Thanks to squid, the ACS researchers came up with a switchable material able to “modify its transparency repeatedly and rapidly” for industry. Applications “could benefit dynamic camouflage technologies, energy-efficient buildings, and adaptive personal and healthcare devices.”

Human Communications Technology

Transferring Data with Many Colors of Light Simultaneously (Columbia Engineering, 29 June 2023). Engineers at Columbia University are figuring out that multiple channels of communication can be achieved by sending and receiving signals on different color wavelengths. A “frequency comb” can help solve the bandwidth problem in communications by allowing fiber optic cables to “send clear signals through separate and precise wavelengths of light, with space in between them.”

This reminds us of our early entries about a lowly marine sponge—the Venus flower basket—whose glass fibers are like perfect fiber optic cables (20 Nov 2002, 1 March 2004; also 10 Aug 2021). Nature had it first.

The beauty of light in nature should cause us to exalt the God who called light into existence as his first creative act in the universe. This is the same transcendent Being who dwells in unapproachable light (I Timothy 6:16) who is the Author of self-evident truths that we are all created equal and endowed with natural rights, as proclaimed in America’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence, signed and ratified on July 4, 1776 and remembered today, 247 years later.

The Bible repeatedly speaks of light in relationship to God, speaking of light not as mere photons but as symbols of holiness, wisdom and understanding. “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (I John 1:5). “Whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God. (John 3:21).