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Charland et al. (Biochim. Biophys. Acta 1992, 1098, 261–265) obtained photoacoustic data from sugar maple tree leaves, in which the photobaric part of the photoacoustic signal declined in time following a transition from high light to low light level, which they interpreted as indicating stromal and plasmal oxygen-consuming processes. Here, a simple mathematical model of oxygen diffusion, which includes a continuous distribution of oxygen-consuming sinks in the diffusion path from the photosynthetic membrane to the inner air phase, is presented. The model explains the main features of the dependence of the steady-state signal on the modulation frequency and the light intensity, although the numerical agreement between the data and the results of the model is only semi-quantitative, which is discussed. It turns out that at sufficiently high light intensity, or at a short time after a previous exposure to a high light level, the effect of oxygen consumption tends to zero because a high stromal oxygen concentration is built up which is saturating for the uptake process. Within this limitation, the merit of the photoacoustic signal as an indicator for photosynthetic oxygen evolution is preserved, answering recent doubts. |
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