Light-Dependent Morphological Changes Can Tune Light Absorption in Iridescent Plant Chloroplasts: A Numerical Study Using Biologically Realistic Data

In higher plants and algae, chloroplasts are the organelle responsible for photosynthesis. Previous work has focused mostly on role of photosynthetic pigments; however, recent advances demonstrated that light interactions within could make use intrinsic nanophotonic properties to manipulate enhance light-harvesting efficiency. We hypothesize documented morphological changes undergone by under varying conditions can highly influence due effects. this work, we a type specialized chloroplast known as iridoplast, which photonic crystal such strong reflectance slow studied how iridoplasts affected light-induced dynamic using realistic data extracted from previous reports. The results show red-shift blue green increasing intensity. Consequently, absorption enhancement induced is also red-shifted. showed resilient biologically levels disorder in structure. extended analysis another nanostructure-containing chloroplast, bizonoplast, found similar results, pointing toward different plant species. finally all types tune depending conditions. general, our study opens door understanding affect scattering absorption.