Photosynthetically active radiation the predominance of chlorophyll is autumn, when chlorophyll is degraded (because it contains N and Mg) but the accessory pigments are not (because they only contain C, H and O) and remain in the leaf producing red, yellow and orange leaves. In land plants, leaves absorb mostly red and blue light in the first layer of photosynthetic cells because of Chlorophyll absorbance. Green light, however, penetrates deeper into the leaf interior and can drive photosynthesis more efficiently than red light. Because green and yellow wavelengths can transmit through chlorophyll and the entire leaf itself, they play a crucial role in
Photosynthesis and does not release oxygen, and seems to have evolved separately from the more common types of photosynthesis. In photosynthetic bacteria, the proteins that gather light for photosynthesis are embedded in cell membranes. In its simplest form, this involves the membrane surrounding the cell itself. However, the membrane may be tightly folded into cylindrical sheets called thylakoids, or bunched up into round vesicles called "intracytoplasmic membranes". These structures can fill most of the interior of a cell, giving the membrane a very large surface area and therefore increasing the amount of light that the bacteria can absorb. In plants and