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Light-harvesting complex II is an antenna of photosystem I in dark-adapted plants

Nature Plants volume 6, pages 860–868 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Photosystem I (PSI) is a major player in the light reactions of photosynthesis. In higher plants, it consists of a core complex and four external antennae, Lhca1–4 forming the PSI–light-harvesting complex I (LHCI) supercomplex. The protein and pigment composition as well as the spectroscopic properties of this complex are considered to be identical in different higher plant species. In addition to the four Lhca, a pool of mobile LHCII increases the antenna size of PSI under most light conditions. In this work, we have first investigated purified PSI complexes and then PSI in vivo upon long-term dark-adaptation of four well-studied plant species: Arabidopsis thaliana, Zea mays, Nicotiana tabacum and Hordeum vulgare. By performing time-resolved fluorescence measurements, we show that LHCII is associated with PSI also in a dark-adapted state in all the plant species investigated. The number of LHCII subunits per PSI is plant-dependent, varying between one and three. Furthermore, we show that the spectroscopic properties of PSI–LHCI supercomplexes differ in different plants.

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Fig. 1: Protein composition and spectra of PSI–LHCI isolated from four plant species.
Fig. 2: Time-resolved fluorescence results of the PSI–LHCI complexes.
Fig. 3: Time-resolved fluorescence measurements upon 662-nm excitation on leaves of A. thaliana WT.
Fig. 4: PSI-related DAS obtained for intact leaves.

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Data availability

The raw data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Dutch Organization for scientific research (NWO) via Vici grant no. 86510013 to R.C. X.L was supported by the China Scholarship Council. We thank R. Fristedt for help with growing the plants.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biophysics of Photosynthesis, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Faculty of Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and LaserLaB Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

    Volha U. Chukhutsina, Xin Liu, Pengqi Xu & Roberta Croce

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  1. Volha U. Chukhutsina
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  2. Xin Liu
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  3. Pengqi Xu
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  4. Roberta Croce
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Contributions

R.C. and V.C. conceived the project, designed the study and wrote the manuscript. V.C. performed most of the experiments and data analysis. P.X. and X.L. performed biochemical experiments. All authors revised the manuscript and approved the final version.

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Correspondence to Roberta Croce.

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Peer review information Nature Plants thanks John Allen, Matthew Johnson and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary discussion, Figs. 1–6 and Tables 1 and 2.

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Unprocessed SDS–PAGE.

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Unprocessed chemiluminescence signals and Ponceau staining.

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Chukhutsina, V.U., Liu, X., Xu, P. et al. Light-harvesting complex II is an antenna of photosystem I in dark-adapted plants. Nat. Plants 6, 860–868 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-020-0693-4

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