Photosynthesis integral and peripheral membrane protein complexes of the photosynthetic system. Plants absorb light primarily using the pigment chlorophyll. The green part of the light spectrum is not absorbed but is reflected which is the reason that most plants have a green color. Besides chlorophyll, plants also use pigments such as carotenes and xanthophylls. Algae also use chlorophyll, but various other pigments are present, such as phycocyanin, carotenes, and xanthophylls in green algae, phycoerythrin in red algae (rhodophytes) and fucoxanthin in brown algae and diatoms resulting in a wide variety of colors. These pigments are embedded in plants and algae in
Photosynthesis light, oxidize cytochrome f, chlorophyll a (and other pigments) will absorb another light, but will reduce this same oxidized cytochrome, stating the two light reactions are in series. In 1893, Charles Reid Barnes proposed two terms, "photosyntax" and "photosynthesis", for the biological process of "synthesis of complex carbon compounds out of carbonic acid, in the presence of chlorophyll, under the influence of light". Over time, the term "photosynthesis" came into common usage as the term of choice. Later discovery of anoxygenic photosynthetic bacteria and photophosphorylation necessitated redefinition of the term. After WWII at late 1940 at the University of California,