On our planet, life is supported mostly by oxygenic photosynthesis. It provides organic substrates by converting solar energy to the energy of chemical bonds, releasing oxygen as a result of water oxidation. Several billion years ago, ancient cyanobacteria transformed anaerobic atmosphere of Earth, making it suitable for the development of the vast diversity of living organisms now inhabiting our planet.
Photosynthesis implements its planetary role by providing energy as organic compounds and maintaining the oxygen and carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere. Also, we know that it is the past solar energy, converted through photosynthesis and accumulated as fossil fuels, that is now being used by our industrial society. As is well known, there are two essential challenges for all of us in the nearest future—lack of energy supply and the ensuing environmental problems. We strongly believe that the possible solution for this is tightly connected with photosynthesis. In order to meet the energy demand and reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, it is important to learn the ways of artificial energy generation mimicking the natural photosynthesis process. For several decades, photosynthetic processes have been investigated, and the available knowledge has contributed to the development of the area of bioenergetics. However, it is all-the-more essential now to exploit all aspects of the photosynthesis mechanisms, with full vigor, to reach our goal of solving the global problems facing us all.
In order to disclose the mysteries of photosynthesis, scientists use a wide range of modern methods and techniques of biophysics, molecular biology, biochemistry and theoretical chemistry. We do know quite a bit about the structure and function of photosynthetic complexes involved in numerous photosynthetic processes. About 7 years ago, the crystal structure of photosystem II was determined at 1.9 Å resolution. This has been extremely significant for the understanding of light-induced water oxidation, as well as in reaching the goal of artificial photosynthesis. In addition, this resolution has allowed investigation of large protein complexes at atomic level, providing us with solid data at the chemical level. However, there are still many questions concerning photochemical reactions and the photosynthetic apparatus of a large variety of photosynthetic organisms that need to be solved.
The 8th International Conference “Photosynthesis and Hydrogen Energy Research for Sustainability-2017,” in honor of Agepati S. Raghavendra (India), William A. Cramer (USA), and Govindjee (USA), held in Hyderabad, India, was attended by scientists from all over the world working in the area of photosynthesis, investigating light-induced reactions of photosynthesis in various photosynthetic organisms (see Figs. 1, 2). The conference was inaugurated by the Vice Chancellor Podile Appa Rao on October 30, 2017, at the School of Life Sciences of the University of Hyderabad, India, and lasted till November 03, 2017 (see Figs. 3, 4.) The organizing secretary of this conference (Rajagopal Subramanyam), Dean of the School of Life Sciences (Pallu Reddanna), and Head of the Department of Plant Sciences, (Venkataramana Chintalapati) of University of Hyderabad, as well as Suleyman I. Allakhverdiev (Russia), co-coordinator of this Conference attended the valedictory function. Further, this group extended a warm and hearty welcome to all the participants of the conference. In addition, James Barber (UK), chairman of this conference, who could not be physically present, sent his greetings to all the participants and wished the organizers to conduct this event successfully in Hyderabad.
We all are pleased to note that the University of Hyderabad is one of the top Universities in India, with an outstanding academic ranking. The main purpose of this Conference was to disseminate knowledge in the area of photosynthesis. In addition, we honored the three distinguished scientists mentioned above who have made pioneering contributions to the field of photosynthesis. At this meeting, we discussed the past, the present, and the future research on Photosynthesis and Hydrogen Energy, ranging from molecular to global aspects. This conference had indeed an exciting scientific program covering key areas of photosynthesis as well as hydrogen energy research. Further, this meeting provided a forum for students, postdoctoral fellows, and scientists from many countries to broaden their knowledge and understanding of photosynthesis (Fig. 5 of the young awardees at the conference). The Conference also provided an excellent opportunity for all of us to meet researchers from around the world, to widen professional contacts, to create new opportunities, and establish new collaborations. The organizers in India did their best to make this event a grand success and to make the stay of all the participants a pleasant and memorable one (see Fig. 6 for a colorful depiction of the conference through what is called “Rangoli”). We know that everyone enjoyed the warmth of the people of the University of Hyderabad, as well those of the historic city of Hyderabad; an added attraction was the world famous Hyderabadi cuisine, and even a grand traditional dance (Fig. 7).
There was a tremendous positive response from scientists from all over the world for this important conference, held for the first time in India, with participation of more than 150 from the overseas. In the five day packed event, we had about 70 lectures and 120 poster presentations. The speakers at the conference were world leaders in their fields and many as 350 participants came together from twenty-two countries.
This special issue of PRES includes papers of invited authors, who had attended the conference, and highlights the most recent advances in the studies of light-induced photosynthetic reactions such as absorption of light energy, light-induced charge separation and electron transfer, and water-oxidation. In this special issue, readers will find most updated information in field of photosynthesis research; in our opinion, it will take the field to the next higher level.
As organizers of this conference, we express our gratitude to all the speakers, chairpersons, and poster presenters for their wonderful participation during the congress. Two of us (TT and SIA) express our gratitude to our coauthor RS for organizing this meeting in a beautiful University and for his efforts in hosting such an event including honoring 3 internationally distinguished scientists (see Figs. 8, 9). Furthermore, we thank the International Organizers: James Barber (Chairman of the Meeting, UK), Julian J. Eaton-Rye (Co-chair of the meeting and secretary of ISPR, New Zealand), Marián Brestic (Slovakia), Barry D. Bruce (USA), Győző Garab (Hungary), Nathan Nelson (Israel), Marc Nowaczyk (Germany), Sergey Shabala (Australia), Anatoly A. Tsygankov (Russia), and local scientific committees, for their fantastic work and great support.
Further information on this meeting is available at https://icprs.ru/archive/, and http://sls.uohyd.ac.in/index.html. Abstracts of all the papers and posters presented are in a booklet, available from the organizers, as well as at http://www.life.illinois.edu/govindjee/world-historical.html.
We express our sincere appreciation to all the authors, who contributed papers for this special issue, and also to our many dedicated, hard-working reviewers. We are especially grateful to Terry Bricker Editor-in-Chief of PRES, and Carola Vermeeren, Meertinus Faber and Jacco Flipsen (all of Springer) for their advice in developing this exciting issue, and for their constant support.
Finally, we thank each and every author (to be precise 163) from 22 countries (Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Egypt, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovak Republic, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, USA), for their valuable contributions in honor of three pioneers of photosynthesis: Agepati S. Raghavendra, William A. Cramer, and Govindjee. This honor includes more than 40 papers in this special issue, arranged under selected topics; we are delighted to mention that Bill Cramer wrote a wonderful review on his work on the cytochromes; Govindjee wrote a tryst with photosynthesis research, and Raghavendra participated in an original research paper on photorespiration.
Once again, we thank the following 163 authors (with their full names) for their wonderful contributions.
Akanksha Agarwal
Shimpei Aikawa
Seiji Akimoto
Suleyman I. Allakhverdiev
Maya Antoshvili
Vetcha Aswani
Olga V. Avercheva
Ramesh B. Bapatla
Michael A. Benkov
Lenka Botyanszka
Alain Boussac
Marián Brestic
Mai Vi Bui
Züleyha Yenice Campbell
Ido Caspy
Jing-Hua Chen
Min Chen
Yang-Er Chen
Petko Chernev
Ciprian Chiș
Iuliana Chiș
Dinesh Kumar Chintapally
Nisha Chouhan
Hsiu-An Chu
William A. Cramer
József Csajbók
Elsinraju Devadasu
Konstantin Dobrev
Éva Domokos-Szabolcsy
Julian J. Eaton-Rye
Hassan El Ramady
Kaichiro Endo
Miklós Fári
Thomas Friedrich
Győző Garab
Krushna Gharat
Vladimir V. Gorokhov
Sergey N. Goryachev
Nadezhda P. Grishanova
Govindjee
Anne Hüls
Saber Hamdani
Jiro Harada
Arnd G. Heyer
Michael Hippler
Kentaro Ifuku
Akiko Imaida
Haruna Ishikawa
Ayako Itagaki
Sergei Iuzhakov
Alexander G. Ivanov
Yury V. Ivanov
Anjana Jajoo
Julian David Janna
Jianjun Jiang
Joanna Kargul
Alexander V. Kartashov
Rinya Kawashima
Naveed Khan
Alexander A. Klaus
Peter P. Knox
Koichi Kobayashi
Hidetaka Kohga
Akihiko Kondo
Boris N. Korvatovskiy
Vladimir D. Kreslavski
Tingyun Kuang
Jiří Kubásek
Victor V. Kusnetsov
Vladimir V. Kuznetsov
Arvind M. Lali
Zsuzsa Lisztes-Szabó
Evgeny P. Lukashev
Mai Duy Luu-Olmos
Eugene A. Lysenko
Shuntaro Machida
Sai Kiran Madireddi
Eugene G. Maksimov
Mahir D. Mamedov
Shinji Masuda
Sonal Mathur
Yusuke Matsuda
Johannes Messinger
Akanksha Mhatre
Anamika Mishra
Kumud B. Mishra
Chikahiro Miyake
Shalini Mudalkar
Akio Murakami
Takeharu Nagai
Gergely Nagy
Valéria Nagy
Ayami Nakahara
Makoto Nakamura
Masahiro Nakano
Srilatha Nama
Nathan Nelson
Taishi Nishimura
Kyosuke Niwa
Hisataka Ohta
Árpád Párducz
Reena A. Pandit
Vladimir Z. Paschenko
Smita Patil
Shahnaz Perveen
Ekaterina Petushkova
Long Vo Pham
Antoaneta V. Popova
József Prokisch
Vasily V. Ptushenko
Mingnan Qu
Agepati S. Raghavendra
Girish Kumar Rasineni
Attipalli R. Reddy
Deepak Saini
Boris A. Sarvin
Ryoichi Sato
Renate Scheibe
Franz-Josef Schmitt
Debashree Sengupta
Jian-Ren Shen
Ginga Shimakawa
Cosmin Ionel Sicora
Oana Sicora
R. Venkata Sreeharsha
Prabhakar Sripadi
Andrey N. Stavrianidi
Rajagopal Subramanyam
Miwa Sugiura
Bobba Sunil
Iwane Suzuki
Hiroko Tahara
Atushi Takabayashi
Daisuke Takagi
Hitoshi Tamiaki
Ayumi Tanaka
Yu Tanaka
Misato Teramura
Alexander N. Tikhonov
Rupal Singh Tomar
Tatsuya Tomo
Szilvia Zita Tóth
Anatoly Tsygankov
Junji Uchiyama
Yoshifumi Ueno
Ikumi Umetani
Renáta Ünnep
Divya K Unnikrishnan
Otmar Urban
Maya Velitchkova
Ayumi Wada
Hajime Wada
Hsing-Ting Wang
Zheng-Yu Wang-Otomo
Ranay Mohan Yadav
Anton M. Yatsenko
Makio Yokono
Long-Jiang Yu
Tatiana V. Zhigalova
Xin-Guang Zhu
Marek Živčák
Ilya E. Zlobin
OttóZsiro
Acknowledgements
The 8th International Conference “Photosynthesis and Hydrogen Energy Research for Sustainability-2017” was possible because of generous support from several agencies in India: Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Department of Atomic Energy, Department of Biotechnology, DST-PURSE, Science Engineering Research Board, UGC-SAP, University of Hyderabad, Reddy Institute of Life Sciences (India) as well as several private agencies. Furthermore, we had support from ISPR, Agrisera (of Sweden) and Walz (of Germany).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Allakhverdiev, S.I., Subramanyam, R. & Tomo, T. International Conference on “Photosynthesis and Hydrogen Energy Research for Sustainability-2017”. Photosynth Res 139, 1–8 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11120-018-0596-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11120-018-0596-7