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The controversy over the minimum quantum requirement for oxygen evolution

  • Historical Corner
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Abstract

During the early- to mid-twentieth century, a bitter controversy raged among researchers on photosynthesis regarding the minimum number of light quanta required for the evolution of one molecule of oxygen. From 1923 until his death in 1970, Otto Warburg insisted that this value was about three or four quanta. Beginning in the late 1930s, Robert Emerson and others on the opposing side consistently obtained a value of 8–12 quanta. Warburg changed the protocols of his experiments, sometimes in unexplained ways, yet he almost always arrived at a value of four or less, except eight in carbonate/bicarbonate buffer, which he dismissed as “unphysiological”. This paper is largely an abbreviated form of the detailed story on the minimum quantum requirement of photosynthesis, as told by Nickelsen and Govindjee (The maximum quantum yield controversy: Otto Warburg and the “Midwest-Gang”, 2011); we provide here a scientific thread, leaving out the voluminous private correspondence among the principal players that Nickelsen and Govindjee (2011) examined in conjunction with their analysis of the principals’ published papers. We explore the development and course of the controversy and the ultimate resolution in favor of Emerson’s result as the phenomenon of the two-light-reaction, two-pigment-system scheme of photosynthesis came to be understood. In addition, we include a brief discussion of the discovery by Otto Warburg of the requirement for bicarbonate in the Hill reaction.

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Notes

  1. John F. Allen told us about his recollection of an exchange at a Photochemistry Discussion Group meeting at London's Royal Institution in 1975. Sir George Porter was organizer and chair. Helmut Metzner had just given a talk on the possible role of bicarbonate/CO2 in the Hill reaction. Porter addressed Robin Hill in the audience, “But, CO 2 is not required for your reaction; is it? Robin replied “Yes, it is.” (See Shevela et al. 2012 for a complete perspective on this issue.)

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Acknowledgments

J. F. Hill thanks William A. Hill and Anita Baker-Blocker for invaluable comments on early drafts of this paper. J. F. Hill and Govindjee are thankful to Ekkehard Höxtermann for help with the figures and to Kärin Nickelsen, Ekkehard Höxtermann, and John F. Allen for reading and making valuable comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this Historical Corner paper. We are highly thankful to Alexendrina (Sandra) Stirbet for Figs. 1, 6, and 7, used in this paper.

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  1. 8211 Hawthorne Road, Bethesda, MD, 20817-3102, USA

    Jane F. Hill

  2. Department of Biochemistry, Department of Plant Biology, and Center of Biophysics & Quantitative Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 265 Morrill Hall, MC-116, 505 South Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, IL, 61801-3707, USA

    Govindjee

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Hill, J.F., Govindjee The controversy over the minimum quantum requirement for oxygen evolution. Photosynth Res 122, 97–112 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11120-014-0014-8

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