ThesisAuthors: Swingley, Wesley Douglas (2006)
Since the advent of life on this planet, photosynthetic prokaryotes have evolved to fill a variety of ecological niches. Many organisms have made novel adaptations in light harvesting mechanisms, pigment compositions, and opportunistic metabolic pathways. We set out to study two such organisms, Acaryochloris marina and Roseobacter denitrificans.
The marine cyanobacterium A. marina lives in an environment where much of the photosynthetically active light is absorbed by another cyanobacterial species. Consequently, A. marina utilizes the unique pigment chlorophyll (Chi) d to absorb light that is unused by Chl a and b in the competing species. In spite of the lower-energy light absorbed by Chl d (-30 nm red-shifted) A. marina is able to perform the high-energy demanding oxygen evoluti... 
