In what could be a crucial step toward achieving the goals of The Sleepless from Nancy Kress's Beggars series, scientists at the Max Planck institute have discovered how a long-studied portion of the biochemical processes of photosynthesis appears to work. For those who have not read the series or did so a long time ago, and without being too spoilerish, one of the things The Sleepless did was to significantly reduce the agricultural load on the planet, as well as the load of food delievery on the distribution systems of our societies, through a trick of genetics involving photosynthesis. Regarding the real life breakthrough, Science Daily has a nice report here.