Journal
JOURNAL OF BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY
Volume 288, Issue 5, Pages 3632-3640Publisher
AMER SOC BIOCHEMISTRY MOLECULAR BIOLOGY INC
DOI: 10.1074/jbc.M112.416933
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Funding
- Photosynthetic Antenna Research Center (PARC), an Energy Frontier Research Center
- United States Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences [DE-SC 0001035]
- United States Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research Project [ERKP291]
- United States Department of Energy, Scientific User Facilities Division, Office of Basic Energy Sciences
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Cyanobacteria are prokaryotes that can use photosynthesis to convert sunlight into cellular fuel. Knowledge of the organization of the membrane systems in cyanobacteria is critical to understanding the metabolic processes in these organisms. We examined the wild-type strain of Synechocystis sp. PCC6803 and a series of mutants with altered light-harvesting phycobilisome antenna systems for changes in thylakoid membrane architecture under different conditions. Using small-angle neutron scattering, it was possible to resolve correlation distances of subcellular structures in live cells on the nanometer scale and capture dynamic light-induced changes to these distances. Measurements made from samples with varied scattering contrasts confirmed that these distances could be attributed to the thylakoid lamellar system. We found that the changes to the thylakoid system were reversible between light-and dark-adapted states, demonstrating a robust structural flexibility in the architecture of cyanobacterial cells. Chemical disruption of photosynthetic electron transfer diminished these changes, confirming the involvement of the photosynthetic apparatus. We have correlated these findings with electron microscopy data to understand the origin of the changes in the membranes and found that light induces an expansion in the center-to-center distances between the thylakoid membrane layers. These combined data lend a dynamic dimension to the intracellular organization in cyanobacterial cells.
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