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Structural biology

A photo shoot of plant photosystem II

Nature volume 534, pages 42–43 (2016)Cite this article

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In photosynthesis, the plant photosystem II uses the energy in sunlight to oxidize water. The high-resolution structure of this crucial supercomplex has now been obtained using cryo-electron microscopy. See Article p.69

Photosystem II is the enzyme complex that produces the oxygen we breathe. It is at the heart of the photosynthesis process, and uses the energy of the Sun to extract from water the electrons and protons that are needed to produce food and fuel. On page 69 of this issue, Wei et al.1 report the structure of spinach photosystem II — a 1.1-megadalton dimeric complex in which each monomer is composed of 25 proteins and 133 pigment molecules. This structure provides a plethora of information to aid our understanding of the molecular mechanisms by which light is converted into chemical energy.

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Figure 1: Structure of the plant photosystem II supercomplex.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Roberta Croce and Pengqi Xu are in the Biophysics of Photosynthesis Group, Faculty of Science, VU University Amsterdam, 1081 Amsterdam, the Netherlands.,

    Roberta Croce & Pengqi Xu

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  1. Roberta Croce
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  2. Pengqi Xu
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Correspondence to Roberta Croce.

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Croce, R., Xu, P. A photo shoot of plant photosystem II. Nature 534, 42–43 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature18438

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