Chlorophyll b chloroplasts. Chlorophyll b Chlorophyll "b" is a form of chlorophyll. Chlorophyll "b" helps in photosynthesis by absorbing light energy. It is more soluble than chlorophyll "a" in polar solvents because of its carbonyl group. Its color is green, and it primarily absorbs blue light. In land plants, the light-harvesting antennae around photosystem II contain the majority of chlorophyll "b". Hence, in shade-adapted chloroplasts, which have an increased ratio of photosystem II to photosystem I, there is a higher ratio of chlorophyll "b" to chlorophyll "a". This is adaptive, as increasing chlorophyll "b" increases the range of wavelengths absorbed by the
Light-harvesting complex Light-harvesting complex A light-harvesting complex has a complex of subunit proteins that may be part of a larger supercomplex of a photosystem, the functional unit in photosynthesis. It is used by plants and photosynthetic bacteria to collect more of the incoming light than would be captured by the photosynthetic reaction center alone. Light-harvesting complexes are found in a wide variety among the different photosynthetic species. The complexes consist of proteins and photosynthetic pigments and surround a photosynthetic reaction center to focus energy, attained from photons absorbed by the pigment, toward the reaction center using Förster resonance energy transfer. Absorption of