Journal
PLANT JOURNAL
Volume 89, Issue 1, Pages 104-111Publisher
WILEY-BLACKWELL
DOI: 10.1111/tpj.13325
Keywords
clear native polyacrylamide electrophoresis; Arabidopsis thaliana; photosystem II; megacomplex; single particle electron microscopy; grana membrane
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Funding
- Grant Agency of the Czech Republic [13-28093S/P501]
- Marie Curie Career Integration Grant FP7-PEOPLE-CIG [322193]
- National Program of Sustainability I from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, Czech Republic [LO1204]
- NWO Chemical Sciences
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Plant photosystem II (PSII) is organized into large supercomplexes with variable levels of membrane-bound light-harvesting proteins (LHCIIs). The largest stable form of the PSII supercomplex involves four LHCII trimers, which are specifically connected to the PSII core dimer via monomeric antenna proteins. The PSII supercomplexes can further interact in the thylakoid membrane, forming PSII megacomplexes. So far, only megacomplexes consisting of two PSII supercomplexes associated in parallel have been observed. Here we show that the forms of PSII megacomplexes can be much more variable. We performed single particle electron microscopy (EM) analysis of PSII megacomplexes isolated from Arabidopsis thaliana using clear-native polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Extensive image analysis of a large data set revealed that besides the known PSII megacomplexes, there are distinct groups of megacomplexes with non-parallel association of supercomplexes. In some of them, we have found additional LHCII trimers, which appear to stabilize the non-parallel assemblies. We also performed EM analysis of the PSII supercomplexes on the level of whole grana membranes and successfully identified several types of megacomplexes, including those with non-parallel supercomplexes, which strongly supports their natural origin. Our data demonstrate a remarkable ability of plant PSII to form various larger assemblies, which may control photochemical usage of absorbed light energy in plants in a changing environment.
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