What are the components of a molecule of chlorophyll?
Chlorophyll, a photoreceptive pigment, allows plants to absorb sunlight and synthesize it into carbohydrates and oxygen. The basic formula for photosynthesis takes 6 molecules of carbon dioxide and 6 molecules of water, reacts them in the presence of chlorophyll and sunlight (a catalyst), and converts them into 1 molecule of glucose (C6H12O6) and 6 molecules of oxygen. Plants use the carbohydrates created through this process for growth and metabolism or store them in the form of starch. There are actually 7 different types of chlorophyll – a, b, c, d, e, bacteriochlorophyll, and bacterioviridin. However, chlorophylls c, d, and e are only found in in algae and bacteriochlorophyll and bacterioviridin are only found in photosynthetic bacteria. Wikipedia has a nice overview of the different types of chlorophyll: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorophyll A chlorophyll molecule has at its heart a porphyrin
