Researchers are using high-performance computing to simulate the processes that take place during the first moments of photosynthesis. Using quantum mechanics as the basis, computer scientists, physicists and chemists are working together to produce simulations of the molecule in which photosynthesis occurs.

Researchers using a bioinorganic hybrid approach to artificial photosynthesis have combined semiconducting nanowires with select microbes to create a system that produces renewable molecular hydrogen and uses it to synthesize carbon dioxide into methane, the primary constituent of natural gas.