Abstract
Unlike the light conditions commonly used to grow photosynthetic organisms in the research laboratory, the light intensity in real environments is dynamic. A simple and low-cost system is described in which a commercial dimmable LED panel is controlled to simulate a sinusoidal function representing daylight hours and overlaid with stochastic shading events. The output closely resembles light intensity measurements on Earth’s surface on partly cloudy days or in lower levels of plant canopies. This tool may be useful to researchers studying photosynthetic acclimation responses.
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Data Availability
Data describing this system are presented in this published article and its Supplementary Information. Any additional data are available upon request from the author.
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Acknowledgements
This work was funded the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Science, Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences, Photosynthetic Systems through Grant DE-SC0020119. I thank Dr. Chase Zachary for help with coding.
Funding
Funding was provided by U.S. Department of Energy (Grant No. DE-SC0020119).
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D.J.V. conducted the research and prepared the manuscript.
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Vinyard, D.J. A low-cost and realistic noisy light system for studying photosynthesis. Photosynth Res 157, 37–41 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11120-023-01012-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11120-023-01012-2