Burning Water (Photosystem II)

The process of capturing and storing sunlight meant that ancient bacteria had to burn water. The method of burning is only oxidation - tearing off of electrons from one atom and transferring those electrons to another.

Early photosynthetic bacteria captured the photons and used their energy to strip water of many of its protons and electrons to use for energy production. Later, chlorophyll could split two water molecules at the same time. We call this a Photosystem II chlorophyll-protein cluster.