Abstract
Increasing the absorption cross section of plants by introducing far-red absorbing chlorophylls (Chls) has been proposed as a strategy to boost crop yields. To make this strategy effective, these Chls should bind to the photosynthetic complexes without altering their functional architecture. To investigate if plant-specific antenna complexes can provide the protein scaffold to accommodate these Chls, we have reconstituted the main light-harvesting complex (LHC) of plants LHCII in vitro and in silico, with Chl d. The results demonstrate that LHCII can bind Chl d in a number of binding sites, shifting the maximum absorption μ25 nm toward the red with respect to the wild-type complex (LHCII with Chl a and b) while maintaining the native LHC architecture. Ultrafast spectroscopic measurements show that the complex is functional in light harvesting and excitation energy transfer. Overall, we here demonstrate that it is possible to obtain plant LHCs with enhanced far-red absorption and intact functional properties.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 3313-3322 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Biomacromolecules |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| Early online date | 16 Jul 2021 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 9 Aug 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work is supported by The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) via a TOP grant (to R.C.). N.L. was supported by a NWO Veni grant. Y.S. was supported by a JSPS KAKENHI grant (JP17KK0106). The MD simulations of LHCII-db were carried out on the Dutch national e-infrastructure with the support of SURF Cooperative through a NWO grant to N.L. and R.C. We are very grateful to Frank van Mourik for helping us build the pump–probe setup and to Vincenzo Mascoli for helpful discussion.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.
Funding
This work is supported by The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) via a TOP grant (to R.C.). N.L. was supported by a NWO Veni grant. Y.S. was supported by a JSPS KAKENHI grant (JP17KK0106). The MD simulations of LHCII-db were carried out on the Dutch national e-infrastructure with the support of SURF Cooperative through a NWO grant to N.L. and R.C. We are very grateful to Frank van Mourik for helping us build the pump–probe setup and to Vincenzo Mascoli for helpful discussion.
